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? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

—But it’s nicer here…

So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doings 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 they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your 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. You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.


Marcus Aurelius

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MARCUS AURELIUS
Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they wo...
MARCUS AURELIUS
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man;...
MARCUS AURELIUS
We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, b...
MARCUS AURELIUS
A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imaginatio...
MARCUS AURELIUS
For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unre...
MARCUS AURELIUS
He misses what is meant by epigram - who thinks it only frivolous flimflam
MARCUS AURELIUS
'Tis easy to write epigrams nicely but to write a book is hard
MARCUS AURELIUS
The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ra...
MARCUS AURELIUS
I would rather smell of nothing than of perfume
MARCUS AURELIUS
Take away your opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Come, Caesar, even by night - let stars delay; If thou but come, thy folk will find it day
MARCUS AURELIUS
To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution
MARCUS AURELIUS
Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday
MARCUS AURELIUS
The guest at the lower end of the middle couch, with three hairs on his bald head and his scalp stre...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolen...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly; but it stands fast and around it th...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, t...
MARCUS AURELIUS
The passing minute is every man's equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours
MARCUS AURELIUS
The present joys of life we doubly taste by looking back with pleasure on the past
MARCUS AURELIUS
You may send poetry to the rich; to poor men give substantial presents
MARCUS AURELIUS
Zoilus, why do you delight in using a whole pound weight of gold for the setting of a stone, and thu...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Remember this that very little is needed to make a happy life.
MARCUS AURELIUS
When the crowd of your admirers is shouting, "Bravo! Hear, hear!" it is not you, Pomponius, but your...
MARCUS AURELIUS
You see these fish carved finely in relief by Phidian art? Add water; they will swim
MARCUS AURELIUS
When I was ill, you came to me, Doctor, and with great urgency A hundred students brought With you A...
MARCUS AURELIUS
It is a mistake to think that Acerra reeks of yesterday's liquor: Acerra always drinks till next mor...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, t...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Rest lightly on her earth, for she trod never heavily on thee
MARCUS AURELIUS
Do you make a grievance of weighing so many pounds only instead of three hundred? Then why fret abou...
MARCUS AURELIUS
You say, Senca, that you were violated by robbers, but the robbers deny it
MARCUS AURELIUS
Light may earth's crumbling sand be laid on thee, that dogs may dig thy bones up easily
MARCUS AURELIUS
How strangely men act. They will not praise those who are living at the same time and living with th...
MARCUS AURELIUS
No amount of misfortune will satisfy the man who is not satisfied with reading a hundred epigrams
MARCUS AURELIUS
Nothing in nature is evil.
MARCUS AURELIUS
It certainly is uncomfortable for everybody. It's somewhat of an anomaly. We're still in August but ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
I think if we had the same magnitude of devastation that they had, we would be very much challenged ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
If it does not fit leave it, if it is not true do not say it.
MARCUS AURELIUS
To be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice
MARCUS AURELIUS
Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee
MARCUS AURELIUS
The man who has a house everywhere has a home nowhere
MARCUS AURELIUS
Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear
MARCUS AURELIUS
If you want him to mourn, you had best leave him nothing
MARCUS AURELIUS
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet ...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Your face is black, your hair like flame, And one eye's damaged, one foot lame: If, still, you're qu...
MARCUS AURELIUS
You ask me, Linus what my field out at Nomentum is to yield? Well this it yields to me: the view, my...
MARCUS AURELIUS
To yield to the stronger is valor's second prize
MARCUS AURELIUS
The height of farce it is, I ween, To be so perfumed and anointed, And when one's appetite's most ke...
MARCUS AURELIUS
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking
MARCUS AURELIUS
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dy...
MARCUS AURELIUS
There is no glory in outstripping donkeys
MARCUS AURELIUS
Why do you wrap up your neck in a woolen muffler when you are going to recite? The muffler would be ...
MARCUS AURELIUS