"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."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.14
"Everything lasts for a day, the one who remembers, and the remembered."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.35
"It's a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.29
"Think of the whole universe of matter and how small your share.. Think about the expanse of time and how brief - almost momentary - the part marked for you. Think of the workings of fate, and how infinitesimal your role."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.24
"Both Alexander the Great and his mule-keeper were both brought to the same place by death - they were either received into the all-generative reason, or scattered among the atoms.'
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.24
"This is the mark of perfection of character - to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.69
"Soon you will doe, and still you aren't sincere, undisturbed, or free from suspicion that external things can harm you, nor are you gracious to all, knowing that wisdom and acting justly are one and the same."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.37
"You aren't bothered, are you, because you weigh a certain amount and not twice as much? So why get worked up that you've been given a certain lifespan and not more? Just as you are satisfied with your normal weight, so you should be with the time you've been given."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.49
"Walk the long gallery of the past, of empires and kingdoms succeeding each other without number. And you can also see the future, for surely it will be exactly the same, unable to deviate from the present rhythm. It's all one whether we've experienced forty years or an aeon. What more is there to see?"
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.49
"Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what's left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?"
~ Marcus Aurelius, Mediations, 7.56-57
"Don't behave as if you are destined to live forever. What's fated hangs over you. As long as you live and while you can, become good now."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.17
"Let each thing you would do, say, or intend be like that of a dying person."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.11.1
"The person who follows reason in all things will have both leisure and a readiness to act - they are at once both cheerful and self-composed."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.12b
"Don't lament this and don't get agitated."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.43
"If someone is slipping up, kindly correct them and point out what they missed. But if you can't, blame yourself - or no one."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.4
"How satisfying it is to dismiss and black out any upsetting or foreign impression, and immediately to have peace in all things."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.2
"We are like many pellets of incense falling on the same altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.15
"If you've seen the present, you've seen all things, from time immemorial into all of eternity. For everything that happens is related and the same."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.37
"Our rational nature moves freely forward in its impressions when it:
1. accepts nothing false or uncertain;
2. directs its impulses only to acts for the common good;
3. limits its desires and aversions only to what's in its own power;
4. embraces everything nature assigns to it."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.7
"Meditate often on the swiftness with which all that exists and is coming into being is swept by us and carried away. For substance is like a river's unending flow, its activities continually changing, and causes infinitely shifting so that almost nothing at all stands still."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.23
