Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Life

Quotes

• “The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”

  The universe is flux, life is opinion.

• Attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

  “Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness — all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil.”

• Attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

  “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

• Attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

  “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, and do so with all your heart.”

• Attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

  “Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.”

• “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

  Meditations, Book II | II, 11

• “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.”

  Meditations, Book VII | Variant: Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. VII, 56

• “Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?”

  Meditations, Book IX | IX, 21

• “Live as on a mountain. ...Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus.”

  Meditations, Book X | X, 15

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

  Meditations, Book XII | τί λοιπὸν ἢ ἀπολαύειν τοῦ ζῆν συνάπτοντα ἄλλο ἐπ ἄλλῳ ἀγαθόν, ὥστε μηδὲ τὸ βραχύτατον διάστημα ἀπολείπειν; XII, 29

• “In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.”

  Quotes from different translations | VIII. 51

• “You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you.”

  Meditations, Book II | Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine. II, 5

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

  Meditations, Book II | II, 14

• “Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”

  Meditations, Book III | III, 11

• “Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good.”

  Meditations, Book IV | IV, 17

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

  Meditations, Book IV | IV, 50