Quotes by Marcus Aurelius

Men exist for the sake of one another.

The universe is change our life is what our thoughts make it.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

“Casting aside other things, hold to the precious few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only the present, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or is uncertain. Brief is mans life and small the nook of the earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.”

“The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.”

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”

“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in ones own self-deception and ignorance.”

“For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.”

“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.”

“We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.”

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

“Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”

“No man is happy who does not think himself so.”

“That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not.”

“There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed wont hail the occasion with delight.”

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.”

“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.”

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