Marcus Aurelius Quotes
In my 12 years as a personal trainer and avid gym goer, I have found the stoic teachings of Marcus Aurelius to be very motivational and relatable.
Whether your goal is weight loss, running a marathon, building muscle, or simply living a long and healthy life, I think you’ll find these quotes useful and in some way applicable to your own life.
So without further ado, here are the best Marcus Aurelius quotes on happiness, life, being content, and more:
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
“Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.”
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”
“Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.”
“Each day provides its own gifts.”
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
“Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.”
“The universe is transformation: life is opinion.”
“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.”
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“Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.”
“Do every act of your life as if it were your last.”
“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.”
“Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish. “How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks.”
“Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”
“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.”
“Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.”
“Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.”
“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.”
“To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.”
“Men exist for the sake of one another.”
“The act of dying is one of the acts of life.”
“Be content to seem what you really are.”
“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.”
“A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.”
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
“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.”
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”
“That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.”
“The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.”
“He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.”
“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.”
“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.”
“Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.”
“Poverty is the mother of crime.”
“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”
“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”
“Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.”
“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.”
“Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”
“Where a man can live, he can also live well.”
“A man should be upright, not be kept upright.”
“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”
“Confine yourself to the present.”
“We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.”
“Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.”
“Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.”
“To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.”
“To live happily is an inward power of the soul.”
“To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.”
“Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.”
“Anger cannot be dishonest.”
“Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.”
“Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.”
“Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.”
“What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.”
“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.”
“Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.”
“The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.”
“There is nothing that happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.”
“When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.”
“Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.”
Thanks for checking out these Marcus Aurelius quotes.
Speak soon.
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