Quotes about Life
Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material.
— Marcus Aurelius
No matter how good a life you lead, you won't please everyone. Someone will be glad to see you go.
— Marcus Aurelius
Everything of the body is a river. Everything of the soul is dream and vapour. Life is war and the abode of a stranger. The only fame after death is oblivion.
— Marcus Aurelius
There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.
— Marcus Aurelius
What am I but a little flesh, a little breath, and the thinking part that rules the whole?
— Marcus Aurelius
And the things which conduce in any way to the commodity of life, and of which fortune gives an abundant supply, he [my father] used without arrogance and without excusing himself; so that when he had them, he enjoyed them without affectation, and when he had them not, he did not want them.
— Marcus Aurelius
Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice or ashes. Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments of earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth.
— Marcus Aurelius
Time is like a river made up of the events which hap
— Marcus Aurelius
Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use you suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are part) and of the pwoer that rules it (to which your art owes its existence). Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it. (II.4)
— Marcus Aurelius
Anywhere you can lead your life, you can lead a good one.
— Marcus Aurelius
Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.
— Marcus Aurelius
Consider the past; such great changes of political supremacies. Thou mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?
— Marcus Aurelius