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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
Random Marcus Aurelius quote
300 quotes
And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing. (Hays translation)
To live your brief life rightly, isn't that enough? (Hays translation)
Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure. (Hays translation)
On the occasion of every act ask thyself, How is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it? A little time and I am dead, and all is gone.
Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.
Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?
Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it.
About fame... Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.
Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all.
Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. (Hays translation)
Learn to ask of all actions, “Why are they doing that?” Starting with your own. (Hays translation)
If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it. For let thy efforts be —
How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them. (Hays translation)
Where have they gone, the brilliant, the insightful ones, the proud? (Hays translation)
To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference. (Hays translation)
Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions. (Hays translation)
Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger. (Hays translation)
Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. (Hays translation)
Choose what's best.—Best is what benefits me. (Hays translation)
“No thefts of free will reported.” (Hays translation)
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