Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Nature

Quotes

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

  The universe is flux, life is opinion.

• Attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

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

• Attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

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

• “Of Fronto, to how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection.”

  I, 8

• “Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.”

  Meditations, Book IV | IV, 36

• “Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.”

  Meditations, Book VII | VII, 28

• “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

• “Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.”

  Meditations, Book IX | IX, 3

• “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

• “What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.”

  Meditations, Book II | All that is from the gods is full of Providence. II, 3

• “Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.”

  Meditations, Book III | III, 14

• “The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do.”

  Meditations, Book IV | IV, 1

• “Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.”

  Meditations, Book IV | IV, 43