Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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301. “Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.”

— Marcus Aurelius

302. “Death, like birth, is one of nature’s mysteries, the combining of primal elements and dissolving of the same into the same.”

— Marcus Aurelius

303. “Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”

— Marcus Aurelius

304. “Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you.”

— Marcus Aurelius

305. “God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose.”

— Marcus Aurelius

306. “Snow endures but for a season, and joy comes with the morning.”

— Marcus Aurelius

307. “When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.”

— Marcus Aurelius

308. “It is right that man should love those who have offended him. He will do so when he remembers that all men are his relations, and that it is through ignorance and involuntarily that they sin, – and then we all die so soon.”

— Marcus Aurelius

309. “Vex not thy spirit at the course of things, they heed not thy vexations.”

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

311. “To live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing – here is the perfection of character.”

— Marcus Aurelius

312. “When you have done a good deed that another has had the benefit of, why do you need a third reward-as fools do-praise for having done well or looking for a favor in return.”

— Marcus Aurelius

313. “It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.”

— Marcus Aurelius

314. “A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission.”

— Marcus Aurelius

315. “You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.”

— Marcus Aurelius

316. “Stick to what’s in front of you – idea, action, utterance.”

— Marcus Aurelius

317. “It is a sin to persue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as a evil.”

— Marcus Aurelius

318. “Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.”

— Marcus Aurelius

319. “Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.”

— Marcus Aurelius

320. “The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of a diseased eye.”

— Marcus Aurelius

321. “When you find an unwillingness to rise early in the morning, endeavor to rouse your faculties, and act up to your kind, and consider that you have to do the business of a man; and that action is both beneficial and the end of your being.”

— Marcus Aurelius

322. “It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be none.”

— Marcus Aurelius

323. “Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”

— Marcus Aurelius

324. “Failure to read what is happening in another’s soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.”

— Marcus Aurelius

325. “There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.”

— Marcus Aurelius

326. “I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found himself a happy lot. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice.”

— Marcus Aurelius

327. “Nothing proceeds from nothingness, as also nothing passes away into non-existence.”

— Marcus Aurelius

328. “Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.”

— Marcus Aurelius

329. “Praise adds nothing to beauty – makes it neither better nor worse.”

— Marcus Aurelius

330. “Look deeply. Don’t miss the inherent quality and value of everything.”

— Marcus Aurelius

331. “No form of nature is inferior to art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms. – Variant: There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.”

— Marcus Aurelius

332. “He who eats my bread, does my will.”

— Marcus Aurelius

333. “Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to the dust.”

— Marcus Aurelius

334. “My city and state are Rome. But as a human being? The world. So for me, “good” can only mean what’s good for both communities.”

— Marcus Aurelius

335. “Time is a kind of river, an irresistible flood sweeping up men and events and carrying them headlong, one after the other, to the great sea of being.”

— Marcus Aurelius

336. “There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won’t hail the occasion with delight.”

— Marcus Aurelius

337. “We are the other of the other.”

— Marcus Aurelius

338. “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.”

— Marcus Aurelius

339. “He does not write at all whose poems no man reads.”

— Marcus Aurelius

340. “Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light or look the world in the face.”

— Marcus Aurelius

341. “Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within.”

— Marcus Aurelius

342. “From my grandfather’s father, I learned to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.”

— Marcus Aurelius

343. “No one can keep you from living as your nature requires. Nothings can happen to you that is not required by Nature.”

— Marcus Aurelius

344. “Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae, bugbears to frighten children.”

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

346. “Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.”

— Marcus Aurelius

347. “Always bear this in mind, that very little indeed is necessary for living a happy life.”

— Marcus Aurelius

348. “For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.”

— Marcus Aurelius

349. “Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”

— Marcus Aurelius

350. “And what after all is everlasting fame? Altogether vanity.”

— Marcus Aurelius