Marcus Aurelius's Quotes

Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.

Marcus Aurelius

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Marcus Aurelius

Each day provides its own gifts.

Marcus Aurelius

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

Marcus Aurelius

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

Marcus Aurelius

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Marcus Aurelius

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Marcus Aurelius

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Marcus Aurelius

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Marcus Aurelius

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.

Marcus Aurelius

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Marcus Aurelius

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

Marcus Aurelius

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

Marcus Aurelius

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Marcus Aurelius

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

Marcus Aurelius

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'

Marcus Aurelius

A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions.

Marcus Aurelius

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

Marcus Aurelius

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Marcus Aurelius

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

Marcus Aurelius

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

Marcus Aurelius

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

Marcus Aurelius

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.

Marcus Aurelius

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

Marcus Aurelius

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

Marcus Aurelius

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Marcus Aurelius

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

Marcus Aurelius

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

Marcus Aurelius

There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.

Marcus Aurelius

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

Marcus Aurelius

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

Marcus Aurelius

Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.

Marcus Aurelius

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.

Marcus Aurelius

Men exist for the sake of one another.

Marcus Aurelius

The universe is transformation: life is opinion.

Marcus Aurelius

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

Marcus Aurelius

Anger cannot be dishonest.

Marcus Aurelius

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

Marcus Aurelius

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

Marcus Aurelius

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Marcus Aurelius

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Marcus Aurelius

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

Marcus Aurelius

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

Marcus Aurelius