Marcus Aurelius

"From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally."

"Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else."

"Reverence the gods, save men. Life is brief; there is but one harvest of earthly existence, a holy disposition and neighborly acts - Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life."

"El perro ladra y la caravana pasa."

"Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. (Hays translation)"

"Self-control and resistance to distractions. Optimism in adversity—especially illness. (Hays translation)"

"Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived—not in the least like the rich. (Hays translation)"

"γεγόναμεν γὰρ πρὸς συνεργίαν ὡς πόδες, ὡς χεῖρες, ὡς βλέφαρα, ὡς οἱ στοῖχοι τῶν ἄνω καὶ κάτω ὀδόντων. τὸ οὖν ἀντιπράσσειν ἀλλήλοις παρὰ φύσιν."

"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."

"Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. (Hays translation)"

"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. (Hays translation)"

"There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return. (Hays translation)"

"Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. (Hays translation)"

"Yes, you can--if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. (Hays translation)"

"This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole..."

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

"A man should be upright, not kept upright."

"You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. (Hays translation)"

"Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil."

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

"Remember that all is opinion."

"No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into "the secrets of the nether world," as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his neighbour's heart."

"Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth."

"For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing."

"Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. (Hays translation)"

"As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion."

"What means all this?"

"Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal."

"...undefiled by pleasures, invulnerable to any pain, untouched by arrogance, unaffected by meanness, an athlete in the greatest of all contests—the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens. (Hays translation)"

"The lot assigned to every man is suited to him, and suits him to itself."

"Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around."

"Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody."

"For we carry our fate with us — and it carries us. (Hays translation)"

"But that which is useful is the better."

"Choose what's best.—Best is what benefits me. (Hays translation)"

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect."

"Respect the faculty that forms thy judgments."

"Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells."

"Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. (Hays translation)"

"The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead. (Hays translation)"

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

"If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment— If you can embrace this without fear or expectation—can find fulfillment in what you're doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)—then your life will be happy. (Hays translation)—"

"As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two."

"Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth. (Hays translation)"

"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."

"Let no act be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished rules that govern its kind."

"By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered."

"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul."

"The universe is flux, life is opinion."

"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. (Hays translation)"