100+ Marcus Aurelius Quotes About Life, Love And Leadership

Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.

Everything happens as it should, and if you observe carefully you will find this to be so.

For there is a single harmony. Just as the world forms a single body comprising all bodies, so fate forms a single purpose, comprising all purposes.

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it?

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life.

It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.

Life is short — the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.

Live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.

Mastery of reading and writing requires a master. Still more so life.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of the reason that today arm you against the present.

No man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.

No one can keep you from living as your nature requires.

Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

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

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.

To live the good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.

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

We live only now. Everything else is either passed or is unknown.

When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…

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.

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.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

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 opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

Things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.

To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.

Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn’t from outside me but in my own assumptions.

About death: Whether it is a dispersion, or a resolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change.

Brief is man’s 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.

But death and life, honor, and dishonor, pain and pleasure — all these things, equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore, they are neither good nor evil.

For every action, ask: How does it affect me? Could I change my mind about it? But soon I’ll be dead, and the slate’s empty. So this is the only question: Is it the action of a responsible being, part of society, and subject to the same decrees as God?

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.

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

Let each thing you would do, say, or intend, be like that of a dying person.

Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: ‘Am I afraid of death because I won’t be able to do this anymore?

The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left, and live it properly.

We carry our fate with us – and it carries us.

What we do now echoes in eternity.

A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.

A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance—unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.

Be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it all as unimportant.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

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.

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise, it cannot harm you—inside or out.

It is the responsibility of leadership to work intelligently with what is given, and not waste time fantasizing about a world of flawless people and perfect choices.

Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you, so keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, and strong for your proper work.

No random actions, none not based on underlying principles.

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

That which injures the hive, isn’t good for the bee.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?

Because a thing seems difficult to you, do not think it impossible.

Confine yourself to the present.

Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.

Epithets for yourself: upright, modest, straightforward, sane, cooperative, disinterested… Maintain your claim to these epithets — without caring if others apply them to you or not.

Here is a rule to remember in the future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ‘This is a misfortune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Stay calm and serene regardless of what life throws at you.

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

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

The only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts.

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

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.