Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
Author
Marcus Aurelius
73 quotations
About Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, the last of the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace, calm, and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Marcus AureliusLook within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
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.'
Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.
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.
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
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 firs…
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Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.
Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.
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.
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
The universe is change our life is what our thoughts make it.
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 thin…
Be content with what you are, and wish not change nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
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.
When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
Anger cannot be dishonest.
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.