Looking for the full book summary? You can find it here: How to Live a Good Life according to “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius (Book Summary)
Due to post length, I had to split the book summary from this post of top Marcus Aurelius quotes. But, that’s a good thing. It means there was too much good stuff to include in a single article.
Quick Housekeeping:
- All quotes are from Marcus Aurelius translated by Gregory Hays unless otherwise stated.
- I’ve added emphasis to quotes in bold throughout this post.
- For quick access if you buy the book, I’ve shown the book number and chapter/verse number at the end of each quote (for instance, 6.10 means Book 6, Chapter/Verse 10).
Post Contents: Click a link here to jump to a section below
40 Top Marcus Aurelius Quotes from Meditations
1. “He does only what is his to do, and considers constantly what the world has in store for him—doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us —and it carries us.” (3.4)
2. “To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.” (7.57)
3. “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.” (5.8)
4. “To watch the courses of the stars as if you revolved with them. To keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.” (7.47)
5. “No one can keep you from living as your nature requires. Nothing can happen to you that is not required by Nature.” (6.58)
6. “The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature—along the road they share.” (5.3)
7. “Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.” (3.13)
8. “Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust everything willingly to the gods, and then make your way through life—no one’s master and no one’s slave.” (4.31)
9. “People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.” (4.3)
10. “What injures the hive injures the bee.” (6.54)
11. “Whatever happens to you is for the good of the world. That would be enough right there. But if you look closely you’ll generally notice something else as well: whatever happens to a single person is for the good of others.” (6.45)
12. “In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.” (4.48)
13. “Indifference to external events. And a commitment to justice in your own acts. Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good. What you were born to do.” (9.31)
14. “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.” (2.1)
15. “Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you. Revere the gods; watch over human beings. Our lives are short. The only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts.” (6.30)
16. “Mastery of reading and writing requires a master. Still more so life.” (11.29)
17. “People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.” (2.7)
18. “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?'” (5.1)
19. “You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat.” (5.1)
20. “It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.” (4.8)
21. “Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense.” (7.69)
22. “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.” (5.16)
23. “The mind in itself has no needs, except for those it creates itself. Is undisturbed, except for its own disturbances. Knows no obstructions, except those from within.” (7.16)
24. “The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. Not to see this is ignorance. To see it and not seek safety means misery.” (8.48)
25. “That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.” (4.3)
26. “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.” (4.7)
27. “Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need.” (9.6)
28. “I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm. You can return to life. Look at things as you did before. And life returns.” (7.2)
29. “External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.” (8.47)
30. “Your three components: body, breath, mind. Two are yours in trust; to the third alone you have clear title.” (12.3)
31. “To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness.” (6.7)
32. “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?” (8.2)
33. “To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.” (10.16)
34. “Be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it all as unimportant.” (9.29)
35. “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.” (2.5)
36. “”If you seek tranquillity, do less.’ Or (more accurately) do what’s essential what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’” (4.24)
37. “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” (5.20)
38. “To bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging. Produce them in your mind, as you know them from experience or from history…All just the same. Only the people different.” (10.27)
39. “Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.” (3.10)
40. “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.” (7.56)
7 Deep Questions from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
At various times throughout his writing, Marcus poses questions to himself that he then attempts to answer. Here are some of my favorite deep questions on living the good life.
1. “If all the rest is 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 with 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.” (3.16)
2. “Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring.” (4.33)
3. “So we throw out other people’s recognition. What’s left for us to prize? I think it’s this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That’s the goal of all trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do. The nurseryman who cares for the vines, the horse trainer, the dog breeder—this is what they aim at.” (6.16)
4. “Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don’t let anything distract you. You’ve wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere. —Then where is it to be found? In doing what human nature requires. —How? Through first principles. Which should govern your intentions and your actions. —What principles? Those to do with good and evil. That nothing is good except what leads to fairness, and self-control, and courage, and free will. And nothing bad except what does the opposite.” (8.1)
5. “To my soul: Are you ever going to achieve goodness? Ever going to be simple, whole, and naked—as plain to see as the body that contains you? Know what an affectionate and loving disposition would feel like? Ever be fulfilled, ever stop desiring—lusting and longing for people and things to enjoy? Or for more time to enjoy them? Or for some other place or country—’a more temperate clime’? Or for people easier to get along with? And instead be satisfied with what you have, and accept the present—all of it. And convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods, that things are good and always will be, whatever they decide and have in store for the preservation of that perfect entity—good and just and beautiful, creating all things, connecting and embracing them, and gathering in their separated fragments to create more like them.” (10.1)
6. “To live your brief life rightly, isn’t that enough? The raw material you’re missing, the opportunities . . . ! What is any of this but training—training for your logos, in life observed accurately, scientifically.” (10.31)
7. “People ask, ‘Have you ever seen the gods you worship? How can you be sure they exist?’ Answers: i. Just look around you. ii. I’ve never seen my soul either. And yet I revere it. That’s how I know the gods exist and why I revere them— from having felt their power, over and over.” (12.28)
15 Lists to Remember from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Similar to his deep questions, Marcus also apparently loved to make “notes to self” or lists of things to remember or remind himself. As you’ll see, these lists typically include various topics which make them hard to categorize in just one specific theme. Nevertheless, these lists include some of his most important wisdom.
1. “Don’t ever forget these things: The nature of the world. My nature. How I relate to the world. What proportion of it I make up. That you are part of nature, and no one can prevent you from speaking and acting in harmony with it, always.” (2.9)
2. “Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.” (5.24)
3. “Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings. Follow God.” (7.31)
4. “Nature did not blend things so inextricably that you can’t draw your own boundaries—place your own well-being in your own hands. It’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that. And this too: you don’t need much to live happily. And just because you’ve abandoned your hopes of becoming a great thinker or scientist, don’t give up on attaining freedom, achieving humility, serving others, obeying God.” (7.67)
5. “Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.” (8.5)
6. “Apply them constantly, to everything that happens: Physics. Ethics. Logic.” (8.13)
7. “Stick to what’s in front of you—idea, action, utterance.” (8.22)
8. “Three relationships: i. with the body you inhabit; ii. with the divine, the cause of everything in all things; iii. with the people around you.” (8.27)
9. “Not to know what the world is is to be ignorant of where you are. Not to know why it’s here is to be ignorant of who you are. And what it is. Not to know any of this is to be ignorant of why you’re here.” (8.52)
10. “Epithets for yourself: Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Disinterested…If you maintain your claim to these epithets—without caring if others apply them to you or not—you’ll become a new person, living a new life.” (10.8)
11. “Your actions and perceptions need to aim: at accomplishing practical ends, at the exercise of thought, at maintaining a confidence founded on understanding. An unobtrusive confidence—hidden in plain sight.” (10.9)
12. “Continual awareness of all time and space, of the size and life span of the things around us. A grape seed in infinite space. A half twist of a corkscrew against eternity.” (10.17)
13. “Characteristics of the rational soul: Self-perception, self-examination, and the power to make of itself whatever it wants. It reaps its own harvest, unlike plants (and, in a different way, animals), whose yield is gathered in by others. It reaches its intended goal, no matter where the limit of its life is set.” (11.1)
14. “To see things as they are. Substance, cause and purpose.” (12.10)
15. “That an individual’s mind is God and of God. That nothing belongs to anyone. Children, body, life itself—all of them come from that same source. That it’s all how you choose to see things. That the present is all we have to live in. Or to lose.” (12.26)
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