Home › Authors › Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Quotes
121–180
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors (a term coined some 13 centuries later by Niccolò Machiavelli), and the last emperor of the Pax Romana (27 BC to 180), an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire.
Military leaders Philosophers Also known as: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Marcus Aurelius Antonius
Random Marcus Aurelius quote
300 quotes
I consist of a little body and a soul.
In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.
Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. (Hays translation)
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. (Hays translation)
Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of there substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may ever be new.
Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner, who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.
Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. 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.
Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth. (Hays translation)
Death,—a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.
But that which is useful is the better.
A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars in the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, "And why were such things made in the world?"
..If you are troubled by external circumstances, it is not the circumstances that trouble you, but your own perception of them - and they are in your power to change at any time.
Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted in nature as to die.
You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. (Hays translation)
Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. (Hays translation)
Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. (Long translation)
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions. (Hays translation)
The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't. (Hays translation)
A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you're in the same room with him, you know it. (Hays translation)
Topics Marcus Aurelius is quoted on
Works