Roman Emperor (121-180)
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Outward objects cannot take hold of the soul, nor force their passage into her, nor set any of her wheels going. No, the impression comes from herself, and it is her own motions which affect her. As for the contingencies of fortune, they are either great or little, according to the opinion she has of her own strength.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Do not suffer a sudden impression to overbear your judgment.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Be mindful at all times of the following: the nature of the whole universe, the nature of the part that is me, the relation of the one to the other, the one so vast, the other so small.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Even the stoics agree that certainty is very hard to come at; that our assent is worth little, for where is infallibility to be found?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found himself a happy lot. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
What is not good for the beehive, cannot be good for the bees.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Because other people are fools, must you be so too?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Praise adds nothing to beauty--makes it neither better nor worse.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Reflect frequently upon the instability of things, and how very fast the scenes of nature are shifted. Matter is in perpetual flux. Change is always and everywhere at work; it strikes through causes and effects, and leaves nothing fixed and permanent.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
The gods have provided me with clear and compelling signs of what it means to live in conformity to nature. They did their part. So far as their gifts, aid, and inspiration are concerned, nothing prevented me from following the path prescribed by nature. If from time to time I have strayed from this path, the fault lies with me and with my failure to heed the gods' signs, or rather, their explicit instructions.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations