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Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Virtue

Marcus Aurelius's Meditations are private notebooks composed during military campaigns, recording his daily Stoic practice rather than systematic doctrine. The principal themes are the constant return to virtue as the only good — under the Stoic discipline of assent — the brevity of human life as motivation for present action, and the discipline of regarding all external events as material for the rational will to work upon. Marcus's Stoicism is distinctively practical: the philosopher-emperor uses the framework as a daily ethical exercise rather than as a contribution to philosophical theory.

Quotes

  • “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

    Μηκέθ᾽ ὅλως περὶ τοῦ οἷόν τινα εἶναι τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα διαλέγεσθαι, ἀλλὰ εἶναι τοιοῦτον. | X, 16

  • 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:

    “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.”

  • “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”

    XII, 17

  • “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. (Hays translation)”

    Ἕωθεν προλέγειν ἑαυτῷ: συντεύξομαι περιέργῳ, ἀχαρίστῳ, ὑβριστῇ, δολερῷ, βασκάνῳ, ἀκοινωνήτῳ: πάντα ταῦτα συμβέβηκεν ἐκείνοις παρὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν.

  • “Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill. II, 1”

    Ἕωθεν προλέγειν ἑαυτῷ: συντεύξομαι περιέργῳ, ἀχαρίστῳ, ὑβριστῇ, δολερῷ, βασκάνῳ, ἀκοινωνήτῳ: πάντα ταῦτα συμβέβηκεν ἐκείνοις παρὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν.

  • “In the constitution of that rational animal I see no virtue which is opposed to justice, but I see a virtue which is opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance .”

    Meditations, Book VIII | VIII, 39

  • “The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.”

    Meditations, Book IX | IX, 16

  • “But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.”

    Meditations, Book V | V, 37

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