Explore Quotes by Marcus Aurelius

Spend your brief moment according to nature's law, and serenely greet the journey's end as an olive falls when it is ripe, blessing the branch that bare it, and giving thanks to the tree that gave it life.

Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.

A person's life is dyed with the color of his imagination.

Let thine occupations be few, saith the sage, if thou wouldst lead a tranquil life.

Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.

Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation. How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that may happen in life.

Take it that you have died today, and your life's story is ended; and henceforward regard what future time may be given you as uncovenanted surplus, and live it out in harmony with nature.

The universe is in change, life is an opinion.

You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow.

Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe. .. We should not say 'I am an Athenian' or 'I am a Roman' but 'I am a citizen of the Universe.

All that is harmony for you, my Universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for you is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. All things come of you, have their being in you, and return to you.

A man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examinations, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not that which he thinks and says and does.

Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.

It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.

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

Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.

There is a limit circumscribed to your time – if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and the opportunity will not return