50 Life Quotes From Marcus Aurelius

1. When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
2. Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
3. Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
4. Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
5. He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.
6. The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
7. It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
8. Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
9. 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.
10. Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
11. Our life is what our thoughts make it.
12. Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
13. The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
14. The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
15. The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.
16. Confine yourself to the present.
17. A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
18. The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
19. You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
20. Each day provides its own gifts.
21. Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
22. Poverty is the mother of crime.
23. Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
24. The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
25. Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.
26. We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
27. Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
28. To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.
29. Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'
30. Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
31. Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
32. Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.
33. Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
34. Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
35. To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.
36. Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.
37. I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.
38. If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
39. Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
40. Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.
41. Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.
42. Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.
43. How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
44. Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
45. Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
46. To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
47. Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.
48. There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.
49. The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.
50. Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.