Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

Not to shrug off a friend's resentment—even unjustified resentment—but try to put things right.

Second, that both the longest-lived and the earliest to die suffer the same loss. It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if indeed this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.

When the object perishes, the pneuma that animated it is reabsorbed into the logos as a whole. This process of destruction and reintegration happens to individual objects at every moment.

They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. 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 or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.

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 obstructions.

Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you. Revere the

Suppose someone despises me. That's their concern, not mine. My concern is to live in harmony with nature and reason, so that my actions won't be worthy of contempt.

Consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by the acts themselves, at which we are angry and vexed

Sexual ecstasy is like death. It is one of the secrets of nature's wisdom.

Where is the harm or surprise in the ignorant behaving as the ignorant do?

Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us.

Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these