Marcus Aurelius Quotes

16th Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 and Stoic philosopher

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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. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161.

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Native Name: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Alternative Names: Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus • Marcus Annius Verus • Marcus Catilius Severus Annius Verus • Verissimus • Marcus Aurelius Verus • Antoninus

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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?

All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

All things are the same,—familiar in enterprise, momentary in endurance, coarse in substance. All things now are as they were in the day of those whom we have buried.

Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside. (Hays translation)

Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind.

Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control.

Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That's all you need. (Hays translation)

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

A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

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.

The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.

An arrow has one motion and the mind another. Even when pausing, even when weighing conclusions, the mind is moving forward, toward its goal. (Hays translation)

Οἱ ἄνθρωποι γεγόνασιν ἀλλήλων ἕνεκεν· ἢ δίδασκε οὖν ἢ φέρε.