Top 10 Most Famous Marcus Aurelius Quotes 🌟
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, is known for his profound insights on life, virtue, and personal growth. Here are some of his best and most famous quotes from his work Meditations.
👉 Read our summary of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
- “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
- “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
- “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
- “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”
- “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
- “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
- “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
- “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” (This quote, often misattributed to Marcus Aurelius, actually comes from Elbert Hubbard.)
- “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.” (This quote, often misattributed to Marcus Aurelius, actually comes from Leo Tolstoy.)
Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Life 🌍
In Marcus Aurelius’ Stoic philosophy, life is seen as a series of moments to be lived with wisdom, virtue, and acceptance. He encourages us to focus on what we can control—our thoughts and actions—while accepting life’s natural cycles of change.
👉 Check out our list of the best Stoicism books of all time
- “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
- “Do every act of your life as though it were the last act of your life.”
- “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.”
- “You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you.”
- “Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”
- “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.”
- “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
- “You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
- “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.”
- “Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature’s delight.”
Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Love ❤️
In Stoicism, love is not merely a romantic or emotional experience but a rational, compassionate concern for others and the world. Marcus Aurelius highlights the importance of love as acceptance, connection, and duty to humanity.
👉 Read our summary of Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
- “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
- “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 cannot 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.”
- “What does not benefit the hive is no benefit to the bee.”
- “To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.”
- “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
- “If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one’s own self-deception and ignorance.”
Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Death ⏳
Marcus Aurelius, like many Stoics, frequently reflected on the nature of death, viewing it as a natural and inevitable part of life. He believed that accepting death with calmness and dignity was essential to living a virtuous life. Here are some of his most profound quotes on death.
👉 Read our summary of the Discourses of Epictetus, another Stoic philosopher
- “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly.”
- “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
- “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
- “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
- “Consider that before long you will be nobody and nowhere, nor will anything you now see exist, nor any of those who are now alive. Nature’s law is that everything changes and passes away.”
- “Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.”
- “Death, like birth, is a secret of nature.”
Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Leadership 👑
Marcus Aurelius believed that leadership was about serving others, maintaining virtue, and acting with wisdom and restraint. His Stoic philosophy teaches that a good leader is humble, resilient, and dedicated to the common good.
- “Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”
- “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
- “It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.”
- “Don’t spend the rest of your time here worrying about other people — unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.”
- “When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.”
Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Discipline 💪
Marcus Aurelius saw discipline as an essential part of living a good life. His reflections encourage mental fortitude, emotional control, purposeful action, and a relentless focus on doing what is right, regardless of circumstances or external pressures.
- “If it is endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.”
- “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?”
- “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
- “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. Yes, you can — if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.”
- “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
- The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.
- “The mind freed from passions is an impenetrable fortress—a person has no more secure place of refuge for all time.”
- “It isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.”
- “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.”
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