“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Stop drifting…Sprint to the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal…That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“If you seek tranquility, 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 tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”
– Marcus Aurelius
“If you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Concentrate every minute like a Roman–like a man–on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow “or the day after.” Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was–what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“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.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Let each thing you would do, say or intend be like that of a dying person.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off…that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“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?’
— But it’s nicer in here…
So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
— But we have to sleep sometime …
Agreed. But nature set a limit on that — as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.”
– Marcus Aurelius
