Antoninus

Antoninus (121-180), full name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, was a Roman emperor from 161 to 180, successor to Antoninus Pius, and who surpassed him in virtue. Being also of the Stoic school and one of its most exemplary disciples, he was surnamed the "philosopher," and has left in his "Meditations" a record of his religious and moral principles.

Wisdom & Quotes

From Meditations

• Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
• If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
• To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
• A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission.
• Our life is what our thoughts make it.
• When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil.
• We are all made for mutual assistance, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids, as the rows of the upper and under teeth, from whence it follows that clashing and opposition is perfectly unnatural.
• Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence.
• What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.
• There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return.
• Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.
• Yes, you can--if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
• You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you.
• Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.
• Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil.
• No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into "the secrets of the nether world," as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his neighbour's heart.
• Remember that all is opinion.
• Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
• Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.
• For we carry our fate with us — and it carries us.
• Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.
• A man should be upright, not kept upright.
• Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
• Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.
• Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
• If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment— If you can embrace this without fear or expectation—can find fulfillment in what you're doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)—then your life will be happy.
• As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.
• By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.
• Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
• The universe is flux, life is opinion.
• Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.
• Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.
• Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.
• Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good.
• Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does—or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?
• "Let your occupations be few," says the sage, "if you would lead a tranquil life."
• Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?” But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.
• Remember this— that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.
• All is ephemeral — fame and the famous as well.
• Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.
• Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.
• To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.
• The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.
• It is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so.
• Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure.
• Things have no hold on the soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it. It is moved and directed by itself alone. It takes the things before it and interprets them as it sees fit.
• The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh--gentle and violent ones alike. Not mingling with them, but fencing itself off and keeping those feelings in their place. When they make their way into our thoughts, through the sympathetic link between mind and body, don't try to resist the sensation. The sensation is natural. But don't let the mind start in with judgments, calling it 'good' or 'bad.'
• The intelligence of the universe is social.
• ...be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control.
• Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter.
• Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.
• Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.
• Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.
• Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.
• Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
• All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to make up the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one reason.
• Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.
• Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
• Very little is needed to make a happy life.
• Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.
• Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.
• Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
• Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,—there, if one must speak out, the real man.
• There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.
• If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, you can’t live it in a consistent way.
• If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it.

Galen