Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions. (Hays translation)

When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them.

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.

Οἷς συγκεκλήρωσαι πράγμασι, τούτοις συνάρμοζε σεαυτόν, καὶ οἷς συνείληχας ἀνθρώποις, τούτους φίλει, ἀλλ ἀληθινῶς.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. (Hays translation)

It is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so. (Hays translation)

He would be the finer gentleman that should leave the world without having tasted of lying or pretence of any sort, or of wantonness or conceit.

Where have they gone, the brilliant, the insightful ones, the proud? (Hays translation)

An infected mind is a far more dangerous pestilence than any plague—one only threatens your life, the other destroys your character.

Why should you feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice.

But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.

And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing. (Hays translation)

Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.

And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.