Great Quotes from Marcus Aurelius (Part 2)
MARCUS AURELIUS (Roman stoic philosopher, 121 – 180)
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. Marcus Aurelius was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana (27 BC to 180 AD), an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire.
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…”
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
“Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.”
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”
“It is not death that a man should fear but he should fear never beginning to live.”
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
“If it is not right – do not do it; If it is not true – do not say it.”
“Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live while it is in your power, Be good.”
“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter; not “this is misfortune” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.”
“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”
“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”
“What we do now – echoes in eternity.”
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
“Receive without conceit, release without struggle.”
“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”
“It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.”
“If man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.”
“A person’s worth is measured by the worth of what he values.”
“Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself, whoever does injustice, does it to himself, making himself evil.”
“The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.”
“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”
“Confine yourself to the present.”
“Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish,”
“Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”
“Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.”
“Take full account of what excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”
“A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.”
“We live only now. Everything else either past or is unknown.”
“No man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.”
