Patricius Aurelius Quotes

You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Kingship: to earn a bad reputation by good deeds. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation. ~ Marcus Aurelius

If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from eternity? ~ Marcus Aurelius

Your life is an expression of all your thoughts. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Embellish the soul with simplicity, with prudence, and everything which is neither virtuous nor vicious. Love all men. Walk according to God; for, as a poet hath said, his laws govern all. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The Stoic discovers the model for his virtuous conduct in studying the laws of nature; just as each object, plant, and animal serves its fated role in the larger order, so the human strives to steer his actions in accordance with his unique power, reason, his inner mirror of the logos that governs the universe. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Leave other people's mistakes where they lie. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Try to live the life of the good man who is more than content with what is allocated to him. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh. ~ Marcus Aurelius

What am I doing with my soul? Interrogate yourself, to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul you have now. A child's soul, an adolescent's, a woman's? A tyrant's soul? The soul of a predator - or its prey? ~ Marcus Aurelius

The body of an actor can be either his best friend or his worst enemy. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Ifit be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid
thyself of, when thou wilt. ~ Marcus Aurelius

And those who complain and try to obstruct and thwart things - they help as much as anyone. The world needs them as well. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Past and future have no power over you. Just the present - and even that can be minimized. ~ Marcus Aurelius

All is Ephemeral, fame and the famous as well. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Enough of this wretched life and murmuring and apish tricks. Why art thou disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee? Is it the form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it. But besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods, then, now become at last more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine these things for a hundred years or three. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this, too, is one of those things that nature wills. For such as it is to be young and to grow old, and to increase and to reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and grey hairs, and to beget, and to be pregnant and to bring forth, and all the other natural operations that the seasons of your life bring, such also is dissolution. This, then, is consistent with the character of a reflecting man, to be neither careless nor impatient nor contemptuous with respect to death, but to wait for it as one of the operations of nature. As you now wait for the time when the child shall come out of your wife's womb, so be ready for the time when your soul shall fall out of this envelope. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Remember, however, that you are formed by nature to bear everything whose tolerability depends on your own opinion to make it so, by thinking that it is in your interest or duty to do so. ~ Marcus Aurelius

When you are offended at any man's fault, immediately turn to yourself and reflect in what manner you yourself have erred: ~ Marcus Aurelius

Consider the whole universe whereof thou art but a very little part, and the whole age of the world together, whereof but a short and very momentary portion is allotted unto thee, and all the fates and destinies together, of which how much is it that comes to thy part and share. ~ Marcus Aurelius

That it's not what they do that bothers us: that's a problem for their minds, not ours. It's our own misperceptions. Discard them. Be willing to give up thinking of this as a catastrophe ... and your anger is gone. How do you do that? By recognizing that you've suffered no disgrace. Unless disgrace is the only thing that can hurt you, you're doomed to commit innumerable offenses - to become a thief, or heaven only knows what else. ~ Marcus Aurelius

All that is from the gods is full of Providence. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Neither worse then or better is a thing made by being praised. ~ Marcus Aurelius

BEGIN the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The way people behave. They refuse to admire their contemporaries, the people whose lives they share. No, but to be admired by Posterity -- people they've never met and never will -- that's what they set their hearts on. You might as well be upset at not being a hero to your great-grandfather. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers. ~ Marcus Aurelius

From Rusticus . . . I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something." - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 1.7.3 ~ Ryan Holiday

"Sweep me up and send me where you please." For there I will retain my spirit, tranquil and content, as long as it can feel and act in harmony with its own nature. Is a change of place enough reason for my soul to become unhappy and worn, for me to become depressed, humbled, cowering, and afraid? Can you discover any reasons for this? ~ Marcus Aurelius

Do you see what little is required of a man to live a well-tempered and god-fearing life? Obey these precepts, and the gods will ask nothing more. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own -- not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong. Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Death is a cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings that move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The best revenge is not to be like that. ~ Marcus Aurelius

That I have such a wife, so obedient, ~ Marcus Aurelius

things: and the vanity of praise, and the inconstancy ~ Marcus Aurelius

Reverence the sovereign power over things in the Universe; this is what uses all and marshals all. In like manner, too, reverence the sovereign power in yourself; and this is of one kind with that. For in you also this is what uses the rest, and your manner of living is governed by this. ~ Marcus Aurelius

People find pressure in different ways. I find it in keeping my mind clear. In not turning away from people or the things that happen to them. In accepting and welcoming everything I see. In treating each thing as it deserves. ~ Marcus Aurelius

By a tranquil mind, I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion. ~ Marcus Aurelius

He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being and thou wilt not cease to live. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune. ~ Marcus Aurelius

23. Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone - those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us - a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted. 24. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Let not the general representation unto thyself of the wretchedness of this our mortal life, trouble thee. ~ Marcus Aurelius