Think Like A Coward - The Secret Wisdom of Suspicion

How it Affects Your Life!

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510 Marcus Aurelius Quotes (To Give Your Life A Quick Boost)

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Top 3 Marcus Aurelius Quotes Images

Some Raw Advice for Modern Executives. But this is going to take some sweat to accomplish. There were two vices much blacker and more serious than the rest: The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle. Within is the foundation of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life. Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it… Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle. It is in your power to live here. But if men do not permit you, then get away out of life, as if you were suffering no harm. The house is smoky, and I quit it. Why do you think that this is any trouble? But so long as nothing of the kind drives me out, I remain, am free, and no man shall hinder me from doing what I choose; and I choose to do what is according to the nature of the rational and social animal.

People with a strong physical constitution can tolerate extremes of hot and cold; people of strong mental health can handle anger, grief, joy and the other emotions. How long will you wait before you demand the best of yourself , and trust reason to determine what is best? When faced with anything painful or pleasurable, anything bringing glory or disrepute, realize that the crisis is now, that the Olympics have started, and waiting is no longer an option; that the chance for progress, to keep or lose, turns on the events of a single day.

In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being. No man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live. Who exactly are these people that you want to be admired by? And is this your life ambition, then — to win the approval of lunatics? Consider what men are when they are eating, sleeping, coupling, evacuating, and so forth. Then what kind of men they are when they are imperious and arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated place.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks. He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon. Let us overlook many things in those who are like antagonists in the gymnasium.

For it is in our power, as I said, to get out of the way and to have no suspicion or hatred. Begin — to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished. It is just charming how people boast about qualities beyond their control.

How strangely men act. They will not praise those who are living at the same time and living with themselves; but to be themselves praised by posterity, by those whom they have never seen or ever will see, this they set much value on. Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a speck of semen tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes. Do little, if you want contentment of mind. If something does not make a person worse in himself, neither does it make his life worse, nor does it harm him without or within.

Death and life, success and failure , pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful — and hence neither good nor bad. The present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose something he does not already possess. Is there smoke in the house?

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Always remember — the door is open. What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat. Until you know their reasons, how do you know that their actions are vicious? Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in your power.

Take away then, when you choose, your opinion, and like a mariner who has rounded the headland, you will find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay. The universe is transformation: A vine cannot behave olively, nor an olive tree vinely — it is impossible, inconceivable. No more can a human being wholly efface his native disposition. Since the greatest part of what we say and do is unnecessary, dispensing with such activities affords a man more leisure and less uneasiness. To have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.

For what more will you see? Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so. Whatever man you meet with, immediately say to yourself: An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself. 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. It never ceases to amaze me: The mind in itself has no needs, except for those it creates itself.

Is undisturbed , except for its own disturbances. Knows no obstructions, except those from within. Death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure — all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil. No one objects to what is useful to him. To be of use to others is natural. When I see that one thing [virtue] is supreme and most important, I cannot say that something else is, just to make you happy.

A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner — and my accuser is my sparring partner. He trains me in patience, civility and even temper. I say that virtue is more valuable than wealth to the same degree that eyes are more valuable than fingernails. How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. Most of us dread the deadening of the body and will do anything to avoid it.

As you are careful when you walk not to step on a nail or turn your ankle, so you should take care not to do any injury to your character at the same time. If you lost the capacity to read, or play music, you would think it was a disaster, but you think nothing of losing the capacity to be honest, decent and civilized. Things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; so our perturbations come only from our inner opinions. We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.

As it is with a play, so it is with life — what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop.

Stop wherever you will — only make sure that you round it off with a good ending. If someone is incapable of distinguishing good things from bad and neutral things from either — well, how could such a person be capable of love? The power to love, then, belongs only to the wise man. To live the good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. Enough of this miserable, whining life. Why are you troubled? Take a good look.

Or just the matter itself? Then look at that. And as far as the gods go, by now you could try being more straightforward and kind. Get what you can from the present — thoughtfully, justly. Consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events that go before are soon covered by those that come after. Just ask whether they put their self-interest in externals or in moral choice. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

For where else is friendship found if not with fairness, reliability and respect for virtue only? Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. Be cheerful also, and do not seek external help or the tranquillity that others give. A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others. The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. The history of your life is now complete and your service is ended: Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself.

Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise. Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at. The tranquillity that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. 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.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. When you wish to delight yourself, think of the virtues of those who live with you; for instance, the activity of one, the modesty of another, the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth. To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.

For all these [blessings in my life] require the help of the gods and fortune. All you need are these: You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind — things that exist only there — and clear out space for yourself. Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived — not in the least like the rich. What Marcus learned from his mother. If you seek tranquility, do less.

Which brings a double satisfaction: Because most of what we say and do is not essential. Think not so much of what you lack as of what you have: Remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present. Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions. It will keep you from doing anything useful.

You can pass your life in an equable flow of happiness if you can follow the right way and think and act in the right way. Failure to observe what is in the mind of another has seldom made a man unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.

Stop allowing yourself your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future. The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy. A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. 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. Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body, this interval is laboriously passed. Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone — those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: The infinity of past and future gapes before us — a chasm whose depths we cannot see.

Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is done. How short is the time from birth to dissolution, and the illimitable time before birth as well as the equally boundless time after dissolution. The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as if it were the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.

It is time to realize that you are a member of the Universe, that you are born of Nature itself, and to know that a limit has been set to your time. Not to waste time on nonsense. What Marcus learned from Diognetus. The first thing a pretender to philosophy must do is get rid of their presuppositions; a person is not going to undertake to learn anything that they think they already know.

Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions. My advice is really this: We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application — not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech — and learn them so well that words become works.

The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not draw me aside into pomposity. It stares you in the face. No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now. This presumption that you possess knowledge of any use has to be dropped before you approach philosophy — just as if we were enrolling in a school of music or mathematics.

Reflect on the other social roles you play. If you are a council member, consider what a council member should do. If you are young, what does being young mean, if you are old, what does age imply, if you are a father, what does fatherhood entail? Each of our titles, when reflected upon, suggests the acts appropriate to it. What then can guide a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daimon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy. If you commit to philosophy , be prepared at once to be laughed at and made the butt of many snide remarks.

My city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome; but so far as I am a man, it is the world. Consider if you have behaved to all in such a way that this way be said of you: Never has he wronged a man in deed or word. What is divine deserves our affection because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. Adapt yourself to the life you have been given ; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you. The spiritual meaning of love is measured by what it can do. Love is meant to heal.

Love is meant to renew. Love is meant to bring us closer to God. Shall any man hate me? That will be his affair. But I will be mild and benevolent toward every man, and ready to show even him his mistake, not reproachfully, nor yet as making a display of my endurance, but nobly and honestly. One thing here is worth a great deal: Do not be whirled about, but in every movement have respect to justice, and on the occasion of every impression maintain the faculty of comprehension or understanding.

If a man is mistaken, instruct him kindly and show him his error. But if you are not able, blame yourself, or not even yourself. When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic — what defines a human being — is to work with others.

Even animals know how to sleep. Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort? From my brother Severus to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice. What Marcus learned from Severus. To show intuitive sympathy for friends, tolerance to amateurs and sloppy thinkers. What Marcus learned from Sextus. From Sextus to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who form opinions without consideration. To have learned how to accept favors from friends without losing your self-respect or appearing ungrateful.

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