Marcus Aurelius quotes, checked against the source

Marcus Aurelius, AD 121 to 180, emperor from 161. The Meditations are his private notebook, written in Greek, largely on campaign, and never meant for readers. Every line below is labelled by how close it stays to that text.

The notebook has twelve books; the first is a list of what he owed to the people in his life, including the teacher who lent him Epictetus, Junius Rusticus. The lines are grouped by how they relate to the text: taken from the sources, rendered freely after the source, or only attributed to him by tradition.

From the sources 53

• Take away the judgment, and the complaint is taken away.
• What stands in the way becomes the way.
• You have power over your mind, not over events outside you.
• Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
• Be strict with yourself and lenient with others.
• Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
• The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
• Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
• How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does.
• Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight.
• The best revenge is not to become like him.
• It is not death a man should fear, but never beginning to live.
• Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it with the same weapons of reason that arm you today.
• Look well into yourself; there is a source of strength that will always spring up if you will always look.
• If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.
• Do every act of your life as though it were the last act of your life.
• What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee.
• Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live.
• Nowhere can a person find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
• People exist for the sake of one another. Teach them or bear with them.
• When you are offended by someone's fault, turn to yourself and consider what similar thing you do.
• Kindness is invincible, provided it is genuine and without pretense.
• Confine yourself to the present.
• Men exist for the sake of one another; teach them then, or bear with them.
• The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.
• Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
• If you are pained by anything external, it is not the thing but your judgment of it.
• If anyone can show me that I think or act wrongly, I will gladly change.
• Nowhere can a man retreat more quietly than into his own soul.
• Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind.
• Strange that each man loves himself above all others, yet values his own opinion of himself less than the opinions of others.
• Time is a river of events, and the current is strong.
• People exist for one another. Teach them, then, or bear with them.
• Take away the judgment, and 'I have been harmed' is taken away.
• The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make of it.
• Nothing is new: everything is familiar, and short-lived besides.
• We were born to work together, like feet, like hands, like eyelids.
• Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.
• The best kind of revenge is not to become like them.
• You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.
• When rising is hard, think: I rise to do the work of a human being.
• Nowhere can a man withdraw more quietly or more undisturbed than into his own soul.
• Do not think of what you lack, but count what you have, and consider how you would long for it if it were not yours.
• If you are pained by anything external, it is not the thing but your judgment about it, and that you can erase now.
• Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
• Loss is nothing else than change.
• The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing: one must stand ready for what comes unforeseen.
• How cruel it is not to allow men to strive after what appears to them fitting.
• What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.
• Give yourself a gift: the present moment.
• Accustom yourself to attend carefully to what another says, and as far as possible enter into his mind.
• Receive prosperity without arrogance, and be ready to let it go.
• Corruption of the mind is a worse pestilence than any tainting of the air.

Freely after the source 10

• Do less, but do what is necessary.
• Whatever happens, it remains open to me to make something good of it.
• As emperor my city is Rome; as a human being, the world.
• Cold or warm, tired or rested: do what has to be done.
• Look at the ages before you: the same play, only different actors.
• Do not force the impression away; hold to what is there, and let the rest pass.
• Do good the way the vine bears grapes: without asking anything in return.
• Say to yourself in the morning: today I shall meet the meddler, the ungrateful, the overbearing.
• If you have strayed from reason, return to it.
• He who changes his mind and follows a just correction is no less free.

All authors on one page, with the labels explained · Seneca · Epictetus