Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, 121–180 CE
57 quotes in the MindQuotes library.
Reading guide
To enter Marcus Aurelius's Stoicism, choose an annotated edition: his notes were never meant to be a continuous treatise.
Our starting point
Discovering Stoicism through short reflections
The most direct way to encounter the themes behind the quotes: attention, duty, and control over what depends on us.
Understanding historical context and references
Notes illuminate the allusions and keep Stoicism from being reduced to a few self-help slogans.
Merchant links help compare editions. Recommendations are editorially independent.
“Our life is what our thoughts make it. Do the best that you can, where you are, with what you have.”Create visual
“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 opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.”Create visual
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”Create visual
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts....take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”Create visual
“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”Create visual
“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.”Create visual
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”Create visual
“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.”Create visual
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”Create visual
“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.”Create visual
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”Create visual
“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.”Create visual
“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”Create visual
“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.”Create visual
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”Create visual
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”Create visual
“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”Create visual
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”Create visual
“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”Create visual
“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.”Create visual
“Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbours, unless it is to some beneficial end.”Create visual
“The mind without passions is a citadel, for man has no fortress more impregnable to which he can retreat and be safe forever.”Create visual
“Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.”Create visual
“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what would more aptly fit your needs?”Create visual