Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

Whatever happens, happens rightly. Watch closely, and you will find this true. In the succession of events there is not mere sequence alone, but an order that is just right, as from the hand of one who dispense to their due.

If you were asked to spell the name Antoninus, would you rap out each letter at the top of voice, and then, if your hearers grew angry, grow angry yourself in turn? Rather, would you not proceed to enumerate the several letters quietly one by one? Well then; remember that here in life every piece of duty is likewise made up of its separate items. Pay careful attention to each of these, without fuss and without returning temper for temper, and so ensure the methodical completion of your task.

How free from all vanity he carried himself in matter of honour and dignity, (as they are esteemed:) his laboriousness and assiduity, his readiness to hear any man, that had aught to say tending to any common good:

You have grown beyond supposing such actions to be either good or bad, and therefore it will be so much the easier to be tolerant of another's blindness.

Constant awareness that everything is born from change. The knowledge that there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it. All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it.

To undertake nothing: i. at random or without a purpose; ii. for any reason but the common good.

One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all this in a short time. To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.

No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the life of an apostle, and been ready to die the death of a martyr.

In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.

With each person you meet, remind yourself that you share a common humanity. You are members of the same family. They may not know this, but you do—so show them by the way you treat them.

When human nature rebels against Mother Nature, humanity becomes a cancer on the earth. The natures of all things are nested within nature as a whole. When you reject what life gives you, you place yourself in opposition to nature—including your own nature—and so harm yourself.

Neither must he use himself to cut off actions only, but thoughts and imaginations also, that are unnecessary for so will unnecessary consequent actions the better be prevented and cut off.