"If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable."
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Quote collection
Marcus Aurelius quotes (page 32 of 39)
777 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Stick to what's in front of you - idea, action, utterance."
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"In reading and writing, you cannot lay down rules until you have learnt to obey them. Much more so in life."
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"Let goodness go with the doing."
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"Neither worse then nor better is a thing made by being praised."
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"To her who gives and takes back all, to nature, the man who is instructed and modest says, Give what thou wilt; take back what thou wilt. And he says this not proudly, but obediently and well pleased with her."
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"And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen."
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"That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within."
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"It will suffice thee to remember as concerning pain ... that the mind may, by stopping all manner of commerce and sympathy with the body, still retain its own tranquility."
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"Be mindful at all times of the following: the nature of the whole universe, the nature of the part that is me, the relation of the one to the other, the one so vast, the other so small."
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"Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if thou dost not succeed in doing everything according to right principles; but when thou bast failed, return back again, and be content if the greater part of what thou doest is consistent with man's nature, and love this to which thou returnest"
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"Does the light of the lamp shine without losing its splendour until it is extinguished; and shall the truth which is in thee and justice and temperance be extinguished before thy death?"
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"Everything is mere opinion."
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"When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic-what defines a human being-is to work with others."
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"In the morning, when you are sluggish about getting up, let this thought be present: 'I am rising to a man's work.'"
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"How powerful is man! He is able to do all that God wishes him to do. He is able to accept all that God sends upon him."
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"It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another."
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"Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?'"
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"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."
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"If the gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for it."
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