Marcus Aurelius Quotes

“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“How unlucky I am that this should happen to me. But not at all. Perhaps, say how lucky I am that I am not broken by what has happened, and I am not afraid of what is about to happen. For the same blow might have stricken anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation and complaint.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, "What are your thinking about?" you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The willing are led by fate, the reluctant are dragged.”
― Cleanthes of Assos, Hymn to Zeus

“40. The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way. You will say, perhaps, ‘But all that is something they have put in my own power.’ Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power. Besides, who told you the gods never lend their aid even towards things that do lie in our own power? Begin praying in this way, and you will see. Where another man prays ‘Grant that I may possess this woman,’ let your own prayer be, ‘Grant that I may not lust to possess her.’ Where he prays, ‘Grant me to be rid of such-and-such a one,’ you pray, ‘Take from me my desire to be rid of him.’ Where he begs, ‘Spare me the loss of my precious child,’ beg rather to be delivered from the terror of losing him. In short, give your petitions a turn in this direction, and see what comes.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

“And why should we feel anger at the world?

As if the world would notice.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: A New Translation

“The stoics divided philosophy into three branches: logic, physics, and ethics. Logic covered not only the rules of correct argumentation, but also grammar, linguistics, rhetorical theory, epistemology, and all the tools that might be needed to discover the truth of any matter. Physics was concerned with the nature of the world and the laws that govern it, and so included ontology and theology as well as what we would recognize as physics, astronomy, and cosmology. Ethics was concerned with how to achieve happiness, or how to live a fulfilled and flourishing life as a human being. A stoic sage was supposed to be fully expert in all three aspects.”
― Robin Waterfield, Meditations

“It is quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: A New Translation

“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius... and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

“Whatever happens, happens such as you are either formed by nature able to bear it, or not able to bear it. If such as you are by nature form’d able to bear, bear it and fret not: But if such as you are not naturally able to bear, don’t fret; for when it has consum’d you, itself will perish. Remember, however, you are by nature form’d able to bear whatever it is in the power of your own opinion to make supportable or tolerable, according as you conceive it advantageous, or your duty, to do so.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Don't be overheard complaining ... not even to yourself.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

“In a world where ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ define worth, we have become a society of self-promotion and self-indulgence, where the true value of human connection and genuine experience is lost to the endless pursuit of more.”
― Jop Helm

“He who waits for permission to live will find himself buried with the others who did the same.”
― David Maze, If Nietzsche Wrote Meditations: Think Fight Club Vibes for The Self-Improvement Fanatic.

“The gods we worship are only mirrors of our fears and desires. If you would be free, stop kneeling and start creating.”
― David Maze, If Nietzsche Wrote Meditations: Think Fight Club Vibes for The Self-Improvement Fanatic.

“Love is not the denial of power, but its highest expression. The strong love differently than the weak.”
― David Maze, If Nietzsche Wrote Meditations: Think Fight Club Vibes for The Self-Improvement Fanatic.

“The man who seeks comfort will find chains; the one who embraces struggle will find wings.”
― David Maze, If Nietzsche Wrote Meditations: Think Fight Club Vibes for The Self-Improvement Fanatic.

“Truth is a sword, and only those willing to bleed for it should dare to wield it.”
― David Maze, If Nietzsche Wrote Meditations: Think Fight Club Vibes for The Self-Improvement Fanatic.

“Do not envy those who walk the easy path, for their steps leave no mark upon the world.”
― David Maze, If Nietzsche Wrote Meditations: Think Fight Club Vibes for The Self-Improvement Fanatic.

“When he wrote Meditations, Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world. He had, quite literally, a whole empire at his disposal. Cities, armies, palaces. All were his. He spent over a decade, from the year 161 to 180, as Roman emperor during the 'Golden Age'. And yet he resisted seeking any contentment in his status and power, in favour of simplicity, consultation and a cosmic perspective. He believed watching the stars was important and talks about Pythagoras - the early Greek philosopher and founder of Pythagoreanism - as his influence here.
The Pythagoreans saw gazing up at the sky not just as a pleasant thing to do, but an insight into a divine order. Because stars are all separate, but all together in an order. For the Stoics, looking at them was looking at unveiled glimpses of divinity - and also fragments of Nature.
It is not just the sky or the stars, then, that are important, but what we think when we look at them. Our connection to the shifting world around and above us.
'The universe is change', wrote Marcus Aurelius. 'Our life is what our thoughts make it.'
Even a man in charge of an empire could look at the stars and feel happily small in the grand universal order of things.
The sky doesn't start above us. There is no starting point for sky. We live in the sky.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

“One of his sayings rather struck me as worth putting on a poster in the Underground or somewhere. “Think of yourself as dead. Now, return and live your life.”
― Joseph O'Connor, My Father's House

“When someone does you some wrong, you should consider immediately what judgement of good or evil led him to wrong you. When you see this, you will pity him, and not feel surprise or anger. You yourself either still share his view of good, or something like it, in which case you should understand and forgive; if, on the other hand, you no longer judge such things as either good or evil, it will be easier for you to be patient with the unsighted. (Penguin Classics translation, Book VII, section 26)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not dream of possession of what you do not have: rather reflect on the greatest blessings in what you do have, and on their account remind yourself how much they would have been missed if they were not there. But at the same time you must be careful not to let your pleasure in them habituate you to dependency, to avoid distress if they are sometimes absent. (Penguin Classics translation, Meditations, Book VII, section 27)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“But, my dear fellow, consider it possible that nobility and virtue are something other than saving one's life or having it saved. Could it not be that anyone who is truly a man should dismiss any concern for a particular length of life, and not simply live for the sake of living? Rather he should leave all this to god and believe what the womenfolk say, that no one ever escapes the day of his fate: his thought should be on this further question, how best to live his life in the time he has to be alive. (Penguin Classics translation, Book VII, section 46)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not look around at the directing minds of other people, but keep looking straight ahead to where nature is leading you—both universal nature, in what happens to you, and your own nature, in what you must do yourself. Every creature must do what follows from its own constitution. The rest of creation is constituted to serve rational beings (just as in everything else the lower exists for the higher), but rational beings are here to serve each other. So the main principle in man's constitution is the social. The second is resistance to the promptings of the flesh. It is the specific property of rational and intelligent activity to isolate itself and never be influenced by the activity of the senses or impulses: both these are of the animal order, and it is the aim of intelligent activity to be sovereign over them and never yield them the mastery—and rightly so, as it is the very nature of intelligence to put all these things to its own use. The third element in a rational constitution is a judgement unhurried and undeceived. So let your directing mind hold fast to these principles and follow the straight road ahead: then it has what belongs to it. (Penguin Classics translation, Book VII, section 45)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Whenever you meet someone, ask yourself first this immediate question: 'What beliefs does this person hold about the good and bad in life?' Because if he believes this or that about pleasure and pain and their constituents, about fame and obscurity, death and life, then I shall not find it surprising or strange if he acts in this or that way, and I shall remember that he has no choice but to act as he does. (Penguin Classics translation, Book VII, section 45)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not elaborate to yourself beyond what your initial impressions report. You have been told that so-and-so is maligning you. That is the report: you have not been told that you are harmed. I see that my little boy is ill. That is what I see: I do not see that he is in danger. So always stay like this within your first impressions and do not add conclusions from your own thoughts—and then that is all. Or rather you can add the conclusion of one acquainted with all that happens in the world. (Penguin Classics translation, Book VII, section 49)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not despise death: welcome it, rather, as one further part of nature’s will. Our very dissolution is just like all the other natural processes which life’s seasons bring—like youth and old age, growth and maturity, development of teeth and beard and grey hair, insemination, pregnancy, and childbirth. In the educated attitude to death, then, there is nothing superficial or demanding or disdainful: simply awaiting it as one of the functions of nature. And just as you may now be waiting for the child your wife carries to come out of the womb, so you should look forward to the time when your soul will slip this bodily sheath. (Penguin Classics translation, Book 9, section 3)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Take a view from above—look at the thousands of flocks and herds, the thousands of human ceremonies, every sort of voyage in storm or calm, the range of creation, combination, and extinction. Consider too the lives once lived by others long before you, the lives that will be lived after you, the lives lived now among foreign tribes; and how many have never even heard your name, how many will very soon forget it, and how neither memory nor fame, nor anything else at all, has any importance worth thinking of. (Penguin Classics translation, Book 9, section 30)”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations