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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
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Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.
She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art.
Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity.
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.
Whatever may befall you, it was preordained for you from everlasting.
The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.
Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.
As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.
Prize that which is best in the universe; and this is that which useth everything and ordereth everything.
A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave, another soon will lament.
In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; “I am rising to a man’s work.”
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.
"Let your occupations be few," says the sage, "if you would lead a tranquil life."
No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it.
Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.
Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.
Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.
To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing – here is perfection of character.
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