Marcus Aurelius Stoicism Quotes

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.

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 things you think about determine the quality of your mind.

Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.

Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.

From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition.

Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realise the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.

In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.

Soon, you will have forgotten everything. Soon, everybody will have forgotten you.

Stop wandering about! You aren't likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient histories, or the anthologies you've collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life's purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue-if you care for yourself at all-and do it while you can.

When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.

Remember two things: i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have you cannot lose.

You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, "What are your thinking about?" you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.

It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.

The willing are led by fate, the reluctant are dragged.

And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice.

It is quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it.

When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.

Don't be overheard complaining ... not even to yourself.

You can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

Soon you will be dead and none of it will matter

Disgraceful if, in this life where your body does not fail, your soul should fail you first.

All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it.

Even the least of our activities ought to have some end in view.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, "I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

If you want to study classical values such as courage or learn about stoicism, don’t necessarily look for classicists. One is never a career academic without a reason. Read the texts themselves: Seneca, Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius, when possible. Or read commentators on the classics who were doers themselves, such as Montaigne—people who at some point had some skin in the game, then retired to write books. Avoid the intermediary, when possible. Or fuhgetaboud the texts, just engage in acts of courage.

Hour by hour resolve firmly to do what comes to hand with dignity, and with humanity, independence, and justice. Allow your mind freedom from all other considerations. This you can do, if you will approach each action as though it were your last, dismissing the desire to create an impression, the admiration of self, the discontent with your lot. See how little man needs to master, for his days to flow on in quietness and piety: he has but to observe these few counsels, and the gods will ask nothing more.

When you pursue wisdom, you will soon realize how much you don’t know. Your knowledge will be incomplete, but continually developing through your curiosity. Arrogance blocks new information from coming in. When you’re conceited, you’ll resist change, and struggle to preserve your fixed image. Don’t fall into smug idleness, used to comfort. Challenge what you think you know, not caring if other people see you as a fool. Progress daily in your own uncertainty.

The stoics divided philosophy into three branches: logic, physics, and ethics. Logic covered not only the rules of correct argumentation, but also grammar, linguistics, rhetorical theory, epistemology, and all the tools that might be needed to discover the truth of any matter. Physics was concerned with the nature of the world and the laws that govern it, and so included ontology and theology as well as what we would recognize as physics, astronomy, and cosmology. Ethics was concerned with how to achieve happiness, or how to live a fulfilled and flourishing life as a human being. A stoic sage was supposed to be fully expert in all three aspects.

Whatever happens, happens such as you are either formed by nature able to bear it, or not able to bear it. If such as you are by nature form’d able to bear, bear it and fret not: But if such as you are not naturally able to bear, don’t fret; for when it has consum’d you, itself will perish. Remember, however, you are by nature form’d able to bear whatever it is in the power of your own opinion to make supportable or tolerable, according as you conceive it advantageous, or your duty, to do so.

Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result.

40. The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way. You will say, perhaps, ‘But all that is something they have put in my own power.’ Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power. Besides, who told you the gods never lend their aid even towards things that do lie in our own power? Begin praying in this way, and you will see. Where another man prays ‘Grant that I may possess this woman,’ let your own prayer be, ‘Grant that I may not lust to possess her.’ Where he prays, ‘Grant me to be rid of such-and-such a one,’ you pray, ‘Take from me my desire to be rid of him.’ Where he begs, ‘Spare me the loss of my precious child,’ beg rather to be delivered from the terror of losing him. In short, give your petitions a turn in this direction, and see what comes.

If all emotions are common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God – saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it – this life lived in simplicity, humility, cheerfulness – he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.

Detente particularmente en cada una de las acciones que haces y pregúntate si la muerte es terrible porque te priva de eso.

Stoicism as the ideal “personal operating system

Disturbance comes only from within- from our own perceptions. Everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist

Asia and Europe are corners in the Universe; every sea, a drop in the Universe; Mount Athos, a clod of earth in the Universe; every instant of time, a pin-prick of eternity. All things are petty, easily changed, vanishing away. All things come from that other world, starting from that common governing principle, or else are secondary consequences of it.

When you start to lose your temper, remember: There's nothing manly about rage. It's courtesy and kindness that define a human being- and a man. That's who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners.

You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.

The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?

Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it’s gone.

Show by a cheerful look that you don't need the help or comfort of others. Standing up - not propped up.

You owe it to yourself and to the world to actively engage with the brief moment you have with this planet. You cannot retreat exclusively into ideas. You must contribute.

If you care about yourself at all, come to your own aid while there’s still time.

Add nothing of your own from within, and that's an end of it.

The universe is change, and life mere opinion.

That kindness is invincible, provided it's sincere- not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight

The most critical part of this system was the belief that you, the student who has sought out Stoicism, have the most important job: to be good! To be wise. “To remain the person that philosophy wished to make us.” Do your job today. Whatever happens, whatever other people’s jobs happen to be, do yours. Be good.

In the first place, sensation (aisthesis) is a corporeal process which we have in common with animals, and in which the impression of an exterior object is transmitted to the soul. By means of this process, an image (phantasia) of the object is produced in the soul, or more precisely in the guiding part (hegemonikon) of the soul

No malgastes lo que te queda de vida en conjeturar sobre los demás, a no ser que busques el bien común; pues si te dedicas a imaginar qué hace la gente, por qué, qué dice, que piensa, qué trama, y cosas parecidas, dejarás de observar tu propia conciencia interior.

B.C.)—Stoicism stressed the search for inner peace and ethical certainty despite the apparent chaos of the external world by emulating in one’s personal conduct the underlying orderliness and lawfulness of nature.

When you are disturbed by events and lose your serenity, quickly return to yourself and don't stay upset longer than the experience lasts; for you'll have more mastery over your inner harmony by continually returning to it.

The sun appears to pour itself down, and indeed its light pours in all direction, but the stream does not run out. This pouring is linear extension: that is why its beams are called rays, because they radiate in extended lines. You can see what a ray is if you observe the sun's light entering a dark room through a narrow opening. It extends in a straight line and impacts, so to speak, on any solid body in its path which blocks passage through the air on the other side: it settles there and does not slip off or fall.

Soon earth will cover us all. Then in time earth, too, will change; later, what issues from this change will itself in turn incessantly change, and so again will all that then takes its place, even unto the world's end. to let the mind dwell on these swiftly rolling billows of change and transformation is to know a contempt for all things mortal.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

In a little while you too will close your eyes, and soon there will be others mourning the man who buries you.

It isn't manly to be enraged. Rather gentleness and civility are more human, therefrom more manly.

The world is maintained by change- in the elements and in the things they compose. That should be enough for you; treat it as an axiom.

There is a limit to the time assigned to you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.

But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

Be like a headland: the Waves beat against it continuously, but it stands fast and around it the boiling water dies down.

Často sa dopúšťa bezprávia aj ten, kto nič nerobí, nielen ten, kto niečo robí.

Najlepší spôsob obrany je nepodobať sa tým, čo nám ubližujú.

Άριστος τρόπος τοῦ ἀμύνεσθαι τὸ μὴ ἐξομοιοῦσθαι

The Stoics taught a life of restraint and control, the personal cultivation of learning, beauty, and reason. The Stoics asked the Romans to realize that much that is encountered in life is beyond the individual's control. Make the best of what can be humanly cultivated. It is a kind of Platonism shrunk to a pursuit of private feelings and thoughts: Do the best with what you can control and refine, and let the rest go. "The world is rational, but it is only amenable to active intervention within the limits of the individual's capacity. Do not try to be an overachiever. Do not dream of social transformation. Private cultivation rather than social action makes for the good life. Although the slave Epictetus was one of the principal Stoic writers, the emperor Marcus Aurelius's upper-class background is more typical of its devotees. "Stoicism is a narrow ethic, one suitable to the emotional and intellectual needs of aristocrat and slave alike, but less useful for the ambitious middle class.

Indeed, the application of the adjective “stoic” to a person who shows strength and courage in misfortune probably owes more to the aristocratic Roman value system than it does to Greek philosophers. Stoicism

And here are two of the most immediately useful thoughts you will dip into. First that things cannot touch the mind: they are external and inert; anxieties can only come from your internal judgement. Second, hat all these things you see will change almost as you look at them, and then will be no more. Constantly bring to mind all that you yourself have already seen changed. The universe is change: life is judgement.

Life is a pilgrimage and a struggle. All we have of time is a moment; the universe is in constant flux; our bodies are fragile; our senses grasp so little; our souls are a mist; the future is a fog; and fame is fleeting.

He never exhibited rudeness, lost control of himself, or turned violent. No one ever saw him sweat. Everything was to be approached logically and with due consideration, in a calm and orderly fashion but decisively, and with no loose ends.

It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.

Independence and unvarying reliability, and to pay attention to nothing, no matter how fleetingly, except the logos. And to be the same in all circumstances—intense pain, the loss of a child, chronic illness. And to see clearly, from his example, that a man can show both strength and flexibility. His patience in teaching. And to have seen someone who clearly viewed his expertise and ability as a teacher as the humblest of virtues. And to have learned how to accept favors from friends without losing your self-respect or appearing ungrateful. On Apolonius

Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.” — Marcus Aurelius   Stoicism

No action in the human context will succeed without reference to the divine, nor vice versa.

Where is the harm or surprise in the ignorant behaving as the ignorant do?

Don't waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people- unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful.

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.

It was for the best. So Nature had no choice but to do it.

Look at the past with its endless succession of empires, and you see the future.

Look at the past—empire succeeding empire—and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events.

Living is more like wrestling than dancing: you have to stay on your feet, ready and unruffled, while blows are being rained down on you, sometimes from unexpected quarters.

Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions- not outside.

The mind, unconquered by violent passions, is a citadel, for a man has no fortress more impregnable in which to find refuge and remain safe forever.

Do not be overheard companining. Not even to yourself.

A person’s worth is measured by the worth of what he values.

So there are two reasons to embrace what happens. One is that it's happening to you. It was prescribed for you, and it pertains to you. The thread was spun long ago, by the oldest cause of all.

People seek retreats for themselves in the countryside by the seashore, in the hills, and you too have made it your habit to long for that above all else. But this is altogether unphilosophical, when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself whenever you please; for nowhere can one retreat into greater peace or freedom from care than within one’s own soul, especially when a person has such things within him that he merely has to look at them to recover from that moment perfect ease of mind (and by ease of mind I mean nothing other than having one’s mind in good order). So constantly grant yourself this retreat and so renew yourself; but keep within you concise and basic precepts that will be enough, at first encounter, to cleanse you from all distress and to send you back without discontent to the life to which you will return.

Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does- or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it?

Not just that every day more of our life is used up and less and less of it is left, but this too: if we live longer, can we be sure our mind will still be up to understanding the world—to the contemplation that aims at divine and human knowledge? If our mind starts to wander, we’ll still go on breathing, go on eating, imagining things, feeling urges and so on. But getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analyzing what we hear and see, deciding whether it’s time to call it quits—all the things you need a healthy mind for . . . all those are gone. So we need to hurry. Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.

What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad- as terrible a blindness as the kind that can't tell white from black.

Stoicism is thus from the outset a deterministic system that appears to leave no room for human free will or moral responsibility. In reality the Stoics were reluctant to accept such an arrangement, and attempted to get around the difficulty by defining free will as a voluntary accommodation to what is in any case inevitable. According to this theory, man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged.

When faced with people's bad behavior, turn around and ask when you have acted like that. When you saw money as a good, or pleasure, or social position. Your anger will subside as soon as you recognize that they acted under compulsion (what else could they do?)

Though you should be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future, for what a man has not, how can any one take this from him?

We should remember that even Nature's inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. Take the baking of bread. The loaf splits open here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker's profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite.

and it is our perceptions of things—rather than the things themselves—that cause most of our trouble. Stoicism teaches that we can’t control or rely on anything outside what Epictetus called our “reasoned choice”—our ability to use our reason to choose how we categorize, respond, and reorient ourselves to external events.

Amongthem all Stoicism found most adherents. Its teachings ofsimplicity, resignation, and calm in the midst of disturbance,found willing listeners among the earnest Republicans, whosaw their hopes of liberty gradually fading before theapproaching monarchy. Its doctrine that suicide wasadmissible, even admirable, when circumstances made it nolonger possible " to take ar as against a sea of troubles,"pointed to a mode of escape from the tyranny they couldnot avert.

When someone wrongs you, ask yourself: What made him do it? Once you understand his concept of good and evil, you'll feel sorry for him and cease to either be amazed or angry. If his concept is similar to yours, then you will be bound to forgive him since you would have acted as he did in similar circumstances. But if you do not share his ideas of good and evil, then you should find it even easier to overlook the wrongs of someone who is confused and in a moral muddle".

To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it. It's unfortunate that this has happened. No. It's fortunate that this has happened and I've remained unharmed by it - not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn't violate human nature? Or do you think something that's not against nature's will can violate it? But you know what its will is. Does what's happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person's nature to fulfil itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

If Marcus Aurelius had encouraged Stoicism as the official religion of Rome, the cultural history of the following 1500 years might have turned out very differently. But the Roman emperors from Constantine on chose to favour and later enforce Christianity as the state religion, and Pantheism was forced underground. For some 1200 years, from the fourth century until the end of the sixteenth, Pantheism in the West appeared only as occasional sparks amid the great theistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

That’s why the Stoics described their ideal as cosmopolitanism, or being “citizens of the universe”—a phrase attributed both to Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic. Stoic ethics involves cultivating this natural affection toward other people in accord with virtues like justice, fairness, and kindness. Although this social dimension of Stoicism is often overlooked today, it’s one of the main themes of The Meditations. Marcus touches on topics such as the virtues of justice and kindness, natural affection, the brotherhood of man, and ethical cosmopolitanism on virtually every page.

Marcus wept when he was told that his favorite tutor had passed away. We know that he cried one day in court, when he was overseeing a case and the attorney mentioned the countless souls who perished in the plague still ravaging Rome. We can imagine Marcus cried many other times. This was a man who was betrayed by one of his most trusted generals. This was a man who one day lost his wife of thirty-five years. This was a man who lost eight children, including all but one of his sons. Marcus didn’t weep because he was weak. He didn’t weep because he was un-Stoic. He cried because he was human. Because these very painful experiences made him sad. “Neither philosophy nor empire,” Antoninus said sympathetically as he let his son sob, “takes away natural feeling.” So Marcus Aurelius must have lost his temper on occasion, or he never would have had cause to write in his Meditations.