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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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“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.” (Hays translation)
If the gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for it.
Is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to desire in a slavish and abject way what is not in thy power?
Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic.
I have often wondered how it should come to pass, that every man loving himself best, should more regard other men's opinions concerning himself than his own.
The universe is flux, life is opinion.
Think on this doctrine,—that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.
If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.
The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not.
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.
Drama, combat, terror, numbness, and subservience – every day these things wipe out your sacred principles, whenever your mind entertains them uncritically or lets them slip in.
Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.
Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce in thy present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined.
Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.
To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.
Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.
Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.
All things are the same,—familiar in enterprise, momentary in endurance, coarse in substance. All things now are as they were in the day of those whom we have buried.
He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts.
All those [events in history] were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.
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