The Best 67 Quotes of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (7 Categories)

A collection of the Emperor’s greatest wisdom, sorted by theme

8 min readFeb 11, 2024

Here’s a quick, handy guide to fall back to whenever you (and I) need to. I’ve collected my favourite 67 quotes from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (translated by Gregory Hays) and divided them into seven categories:

How to live (virtuously)
On kindness and goodness
On anger and complaining
Overcoming procrastination and wasting time
On fate and nature
On death
Encouragement

You’ll find a final reminder at the end of the article. If you’ve read the book yourself, feel free to tell me if I’ve missed anything!

How to live (virtuously)

Everything a person needs to avoid real harm they have placed within him. (2.11)
To stand up straight — not straightened. (3.5)
Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors. (3.7)
Concentrate on this, your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state — the state a rational, civic mind should be in. (3.7)
No random actions, none not based on underlying principles. (4.2)
You have a mind?
— Yes.
Well, why not use it? Isn’t that all you want — for it to do its job (4.13)
To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it. (4.49)
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way. (5.20)
You can live here as you expect to live there. (5.29)
Just do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.
Cold or warm.
Tired or well-rested.
Despised or honoured.
Dying… or busy with other assignments. (6.2)
Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell. (6.13)
It’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realising it. (7.67)
The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all. {…}
The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. (8.5)
Everything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What’s surprising about that? Even the sun will tell you, “I have a purpose,” and the other gods as well. And why were you born? For pleasure? See if that answer will stand up to questioning. (8.19)
It’s the pursuit of these things {A/N: e.g. pleasures}, and your attempts to avoid them, that leave you in such turmoil. And yet they aren’t seeking you out; you are the one seeking them. (11.11)
It’s all in how you perceive it. You are in control. (12.22)

On kindness & goodness

What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. (2.13)
Anyone with a feeling for nature — a deeper sensitivity — will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He’ll find the jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He’ll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly — things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works. (3.2)
To care for all human beings is part of being human. (3.4)
What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness. (8.57)
“And your profession?” “Goodness.” (11.5)
None of us is forbidden to pursue our own good. (11.16)
Kindness is invincible, provided it’s sincere — not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight — if you get the change — correcting him cheerfully at the exact moment that he’s trying to do you harm. (11.18)
It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being. (11.18)
There’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility. (12.27)

On anger and complaining

That sort of person is bound to do that. You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice. (4.6)
Remember — your responsibilities can be broken down into individual parts as well. Concentrate on those, and finish the job methodically — without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger. (6.26)
“And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!”(7.38)
{…} Pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don’t magnify them in your imagination. (7.64)
I have no right, as a part, to complain about what is assigned me by the whole. Because what benefits the whole can’t harm the parts, and the whole does nothing that doesn’t benefit it. (10.6)
Because anger, too, is weakness, as much as breaking down and giving up the struggle. (11.9)
{…} You’ve made enough mistakes yourself. You’re just like them. (11.18)
When you lose your temper, or even feel irritated: that human life is very short. Before long all of us will be laid out side by side. (11.18)
How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them. (11.18)
There’s nothing manly about rage. (11.18)
(A/N: this quote, just like any other, applies to anyone. If you want, replace “manly” with “rational” “civil”, or “virtuous”)

Overcoming procrastination & wasting time

Yes, keep degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity willl be gone. Everyone gets one life. (2.6)
Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people — unless it affects the common good. (3.4)
Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. (4.17)
{…} Not to be distracted by their darkness. To run straight to the finish line, unswerving. (4.18)
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I waws created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
— — But it’s nicer 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 as they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what you’re 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. (5.1)
Don’t you see how much you have to offer — beyond excuses like “can’t”? And yet you still settle for less. (5.5)
Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right. (10.12)
To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one. (10.16)
None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal. (10.34)

On fate & nature

We carry our fate with us — and it carries us. (3.4)
Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces — to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it — and makes it burn still higher. (4.1)
It was for the best. So Nature had no choice but to do it. (4.9)
The world as a living being — one nature, one soul. Keep that in mind. And how everything feeds into that single experience, moves with a single motion. And how everything helps produce everything else. Spun and woven together. (4.40)
Nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure. (5.18)
It’s normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you’re using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for human being to feel stress is normal — if he’s living a normal human life.
And if it’s normal, how can it be bad? (6.33)
Whatever happens to you is for the good of the world. {And} if you look closely you’ll generally notice something else as well: whatever happens to a single person is for the good of others. (6.45)
“For what is just and good is on my side.” (7.42)
What humans experience is part of human experience. {…}
Nothing that can happen is unusual or unnatural, and there’s no sense in complaining. Nature does not make us endure the unendurable. (8.56)
{…} everything has to submit. But only rational beings can do so voluntarily. (10.28)

On death

The longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose. (2.14)
{…} That {the power within us} accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed. If it doesn’t hurt the individual elements to change continually into one another, why are people afraid of all them changing and separating? It’s a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil. (2.17)
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. (4.48)
If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything — as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it. (6.37)
When we cease from activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion, it’s a kind of death. And it doesn’t harm us. Think about your life: childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every transformation a kind of dying. Was that so terrible? (9.21)
Everything’s destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish. So that new things can be born. (12.21)
“But I’ve only gotten through three acts…!”
Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine.
So make your exit with grace — the same grace shown to you. (12.36)

Encouragement

Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human — however imperfectly — and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on. (5.9)
When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. (6.11)
Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognise that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too. (6.19)
When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them. (6.48)
Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart? (7.18)

A final reminder:

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but also care more about their opinion than our own. (12.4)

To read more short articles about how to make the most of your time, be sure to follow this account. Recommendations are appreciated.
All the best,
The Gambit