Marcus Aurelius Quotes

“Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you.”

“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 cannot tell good from evil.”

“Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquility.”

“Ask yourself at every moment, ’Is this necessary?’”

“Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you will have more time and more tranquility.”

“You must build up your life action by action, and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible, and no one can keep you from this.”

“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”

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

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”

“Where a man can live, he can also live well.”

“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ’This is misfortune,’ but ’To bear this worthily is good fortune.’”

“Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.”

“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”

“Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.”

“That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.”

“Kindness is invincible, but only when it’s sincere, with no hypocrisy or faking.”

“Humans were made to help others. And when we do help others, or help them to do something, we’re doing what we were designed for.”

“When you’ve done well and another has benefited by it, why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top, credit for the good deed or a favor in return?”

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“Life is short, the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.”