50 Marcus Aurelius Quotes – His Very Best Quotes!
Looking for the best Marcus Aurelius quotes? These 50 epic Marcus Aurelius quotes will show you what true wisdom is all about.
Hey my friend,
Let’s chat about Marcus Aurelius quotes.
The following quotes from Marcus Aurelius will definitely make you think and expand your mind.
These Marcus Aurelius quotes will also give you a different perspective on life.
Let me share with you the very best Marcus Aurelius quotes.
So without further ado, here are the 50 Marcus Aurelius quotes – embrace these and enjoy!
MARCUS AURELIUS QUOTES
1 – The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts. Marcus Aurelius
2 – It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. Marcus Aurelius
3 – Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not “This is misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune. Marcus Aurelius
4 – Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours. Marcus Aurelius
5 – Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. Marcus Aurelius
6 – How ridiculous and unrealistic is the man who is astonished at anything that happens in life. Marcus Aurelius
7- Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness. Marcus Aurelius
8 – Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. Marcus Aurelius
9 – The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. Marcus Aurelius
10 – If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Marcus Aurelius
MARCUS AURELIUS QUOTES
11 – Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good. Marcus Aurelius
12 – A person’s worth is measured by the worth of what he values. Marcus Aurelius
13 – You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. Marcus Aurelius
14 – Receive without conceit, release without struggle. Marcus Aurelius
15 – Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming—in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you—means a loss of opportunity for some other task. Marcus Aurelius
16 – Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish. Marcus Aurelius
17- A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. Marcus Aurelius
18 – When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love … Marcus Aurelius
19 – Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. Marcus Aurelius
20 – Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying…or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: “To do what needs doing.” Look inward.
Don’t let the true nature of anything elude you. Before long, all existing things will be transformed, to rise like smoke (assuming all things become one), or be dispersed in fragments…to move from one unselfish act to another with God in mind.
Only there, delight and stillness…when jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it. Marcus Aurelius
MARCUS AURELIUS QUOTES
21 – Don’t go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one. Marcus Aurelius
22 – Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it. Marcus Aurelius
23 – The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are. Marcus Aurelius
24 – For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose. Marcus Aurelius
25 – At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?
So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? Marcus Aurelius
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. Marcus Aurelius
26 – Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect. Marcus Aurelius
27- How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. Marcus Aurelius
28 – Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back. Marcus Aurelius
29 – No man is happy who does not think himself so. Marcus Aurelius
30 – The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. Marcus Aurelius
MARCUS AURELIUS QUOTES
31 – Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. Marcus Aurelius
32 – You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone. Marcus Aurelius
33 – When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you. Marcus Aurelius
34 – When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard? Marcus Aurelius
35 – You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say. Marcus Aurelius
36 – Remember two things: i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have you cannot lose. Marcus Aurelius
37- Our life is what our thoughts make it. Marcus Aurelius
38 – Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: ‘What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?’ Marcus Aurelius
You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own. Marcus Aurelius
39 – Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking. Marcus Aurelius
40 – Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize? Marcus Aurelius
MARCUS AURELIUS QUOTES
41 – What we do now echoes in eternity. Marcus Aurelius
42 – Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, “Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?” neither intolerable nor everlasting – if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Marcus Aurelius
Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . Marcus Aurelius
43 – A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others. Marcus Aurelius
44 – If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it. Marcus Aurelius
45 – Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs? Marcus Aurelius
46 – The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Marcus Aurelius
47- How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy. Marcus Aurelius
48 – When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. Marcus Aurelius
But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Marcus Aurelius
Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural. Marcus Aurelius
49 – 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
50 – Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart. Marcus Aurelius
Much love,
Frances Vidakovic
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Hey, I’m Frances Vidakovic! I help you live a richer, lighter life while pursuing dreamy goals – without sacrificing your soul, sanity or family life. 🫶🏻 Author. Coach. Course Creator. DON’T DIE UNHAPPY! → Wake up. Do what matters. Savour it all 🌷