“I just lost my wife of 60 years and it’s sort of devastating, but there was a Marcus Aurelius quote that really lifted me, which was that if you lose a loved one, honor her. In a sense, try to be more like her and then she’ll live on in your actions. My wife was very good—if someone was alone or sick or something, she’d call them up and be comforting to them. And I’m not like that, you know? So I started to do that. People that I know, some guys my age who have no grandchildren, I call them up and say, Hey, how are you? And they are so pleased and so kind. And that’s how I keep my wife in my life.”
Francis Ford Coppola
Marcus Aurelius Quotes
“Anger is easy. It’s easier to be angry than hurt. Being angry is active, it’s aggressive, it’s distracting. Hurt is acceptance. It’s something you sit with. It’s something you wish you didn’t feel, but you do. It’s something you wish hadn’t happened, but did. When Marcus Aurelius said it wasn’t manly to get angry, perhaps this is what he was saying. That the childish thing is to yell about and fight about and reject the hurt that you feel. The adult thing is to try to understand it, to come to terms with it, to understand that—like all things—it will pass, and that if you’re patient and have perspective, it will help. The responsible thing is to explore the roots of an emotion, to ask why you’re feeling a particular way, why something was so triggering or painful and to try to deal with that.”
Ryan Holiday
“Even if you have drifted off the path. Marcus Aurelius tried to remind himself that there was a spring of goodness inside of him and that no matter what he or anyone shoveled on some of it, it was still there, still fresh and new and ever-flowing. The Stoics did not believe in original sin. They did not think we were hopelessly broken. They believed that being who we were—living well, living as our nature intended us to live—was always possible. You might be low and awful right now, Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, but in just a few days you can be worthy of being seen as a god. He was telling himself he just had to go back to the teachings, go back to his principles, go back to the spring.”
Ryan Holiday
“Ambition is tying your well-being to what other people do and say… sanity is tying it to your own actions.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Whenever you want to cheer yourself, think of the qualities of your fellows—the energy of one, for example, the decency of another, the generosity of a third, some other merit in a fourth. There is nothing so cheering as the stamp of virtues manifest in the character of colleagues—and the greater the collective incidence, the better. So keep them ready to hand.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 125)
“Continually review in your mind those whom a particular anger took to extremes, those who reached the greatest heights of glory or disaster or enmity or any other sort of fortune. Then stop and think: where is it all now? Smoke and ashes, a story told or even a story forgotten. Think how worthless all this striving is: how much wiser to use the material given to you to make yourself in all simplicity just, self-controlled, obedient to the gods. The pride that prides itself on freedom from pride is the hardest of all to bear.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 120)
“That in a short while you will be nobody and nowhere; and the same of all that you now see and all who are now alive. It is the nature of all things to change, to perish and be transformed, so that in succession different things can come to be.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 119)
“If it is not right, don’t do it: if it is not true, don’t say it.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 118)
“Look at causation stripped bare of its covers; look at the ulterior reference of any action. Consider, what is pain? What is pleasure? What is death? What is fame? Who is not himself the cause of his own unrest? Reflect how no one is hampered by any other; and that all is as thinking makes it so.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 117)
“There is nothing manly in being angry, but a gentle calm is both more human and therefore more virile. It is the gentle who have strength, sinew, and courage—not the indignant and complaining. The closer to control of emotion, the closer to power. Anger is as much a sign of weakness as is pain.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 111)
“Calculated honesty is a stiletto. There is nothing more degrading than the friendship of wolves: avoid that above all. The good, honest, kindly man has it in his eyes, and you cannot mistake him.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 99)
“No more roundabout discussion of what makes a good man. Be one!”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 99)
“You might think that the Stoics were these unfeeling people…But that’s actually not true at all…Marcus Aurelius said that he learned from one of his mentors to be free of passions but full of love. If you want to feel good, if you want to be loved by other people, it’s about what you put out in the world…Because ultimately that’s what you control. If you want to feel better, don’t go expecting other people to validate you or to give you what you want. Give what you want. Marcus says if you want to feel good, do good. See everyone you meet, as Seneca said, as an opportunity to practice kindness. And the rest will take care of itself.”
Ryan Holiday
“When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you. But you should still be kind to them. They are by nature your friends, and the gods too help them in various ways—dreams and divination—at least to the objects of their concern.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 88)
“The sinner sins against himself: the wrongdoer wrongs himself, by making himself morally bad.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 85)
“Do you want the praise of a man who curses himself three times an hour? Do you want to please a man who can’t please himself? Can a man please himself when he regrets almost everything he does?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 81)