Marcus Aurelius on Life

"That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within."

"The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing."

"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."

"The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't."

"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."

"Remember this— that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life."

"Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal."

"As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion."

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

"He that dies in extreme old age will be reduced to the same state with him that is cut down untimely."

"Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them."

"Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life."

"“If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, you can’t live it in a consistent way."

"About fame... Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after."

"Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,—there, if one must speak out, the real man."

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

"Let your occupations be few," says the sage, "if you would lead a tranquil life."

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

"The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected."

"It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself."

"“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception."

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

"Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?"

"To live your brief life rightly, isn't that enough?"

"Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted in nature as to die."

"Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life."

"Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth."

"Very little is needed to make a happy life."

"Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life."

"To her who gives and takes back all, to nature, the man who is instructed and modest says, Give what thou wilt; take back what thou wilt. And he says this not proudly, but obediently and well pleased with her."