Marcus Aurelius Quotes (90) Spiritual Sayings
About the Author: Marcus Aurelius (Latin: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus; April 26, 121 CE – March 17, 180 CE), was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus' death in 169. He was the last of the Five Good Emperors, and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. During his reign, the Empire defeated a revitalized Parthian Empire in the East; Aurelius' general Avidius Cassius sacked the capital Ctesiphon in 164. In central Europe, Aurelius fought the Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians with success during the Marcomannic Wars, with the threat of the Germanic tribes beginning to represent a troubling reality for the Empire. A revolt in the East led by Avidius Cassius failed to gain momentum and was suppressed immediately. Marcus Aurelius' Stoic tome Meditations, written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered as a literary monument to a philosophy of service and duty, describing how to find and preserve equanimity in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and inspiration.
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“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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, Meditations
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“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“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, Meditations
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“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.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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 opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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, Meditations
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“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.”
― Marcus Aurelius
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“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.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Receive without conceit, release without struggle.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying...or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: "To do what needs doing." Look inward. Don't let the true nature of anything elude you. Before long, all existing things will be transformed, to rise like smoke (assuming all things become one), or be dispersed in fragments...to move from one unselfish act to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness...when jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Though you break your heart, men will go on as before.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Regain your senses, call yourself back, and once again wake up. Now that you realize that only dreams were troubling you, view this 'reality' as you view your dreams.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.”
― Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
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“Do what you will. Even if you tear yourself apart, most people will continue doing the same things.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself; whoever does injustice, does it to himself, making himself evil.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming -- in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you -- means a loss of opportunity for some other task.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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, Meditations
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“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“What we do now echoes in eternity.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“What we cannot bear removes us from life; what remains can be borne.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“It loved to happen.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Unhappy am I because this has happened to me.- Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Neither worse then or better is a thing made by being praised.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Life is opinion.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in so far as it stands ready against the accidental and the unforeseen, and is not apt to fall.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor does one live any other life than that which he will lose.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“How ridiculous and unrealistic is the man who is astonished at anything that happens in life.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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, Meditations
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“Everything - a horse, a vine - is created for some duty... For what task, then, were you yourself created?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“No man is happy who does not think himself so.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present - I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“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.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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