Your life is what your thoughts make it.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Life and Living
Everything—a horse, a vine—is created for some duty…For what task, then, were you yourself created? A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Love, Purpose, Vision
There is no misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good fortune.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Misfortune
Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Losing, Loss, Losers
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
—Marcus Aurelius
To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: People
Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Endurance
Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Attitude, Anger, Grief
Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light or look the world in the face.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Crises, Principles
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.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Fate
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Fate, Acceptance, Love, Feelings
In the morning let this thought be present: I am rising to a man’s work.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Day
The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Goals, Business, Aspirations
Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, o Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Harmony
If thou workest at that which is before thee… expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to Nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Happiness
It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: The Present
We ought to do good to others as simply and naturally as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Goodness, Kindness
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Anger, Wisdom
Give thy mind more to what thou has than to what thou hast not.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Possessions
Our understandings are always liable to error.—Nature and certainty are very hard to come at, and infallibility is mere vanity and pretence.
—Marcus Aurelius
Dress not thy thoughts in too fine a raiment. And be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Money
For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Time
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Time, Time Management
Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself, and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Beauty
A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Man
It is false to say that you are a vicious man, Zoilus; you are not a vicious man, you are vice itself.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Vice
Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Words
All the transactions of the past differ very little from those of the present.
—Marcus Aurelius
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.
—Marcus Aurelius
Topics: Trouble, Opinions, Opinion, Self-reliance, Confidence, Gossip
A wrong-doer is often a man that has left something undone, not always he that has done something.
—Marcus Aurelius
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Jacques Derrida French Philosopher, Literary Theorist
- John Rawls American Philosopher
- Karl Popper Austrian-born British Philosopher
- Zeno of Citium Greek Philosopher
- Jeremy Bentham British Philosopher, Economist
- Friedrich Schleiermacher German Theologian
- Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach German Philosopher
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel German Philosopher
- Mencius Chinese Philosopher, Sage
- Boethius Roman Statesman, Philosopher
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