Marcus Aurelius Meditations Summary of Quotes
Hi Folks, For today’s post, I’m going to coming to cover an idea given to me by somebody I was recently working with. Not somebody I knew about prior to beginning work on this article but today I am going to go over some of Marcus Aurelius Meditations Summary of Quotes. I’ve not heard too much about this man before but it sounds like his work has been very inspiring to a lot of people. His writings have undoubtedly really stood the test of time. Which really gives me great pleasure to write this post about him for secretgardenofmind.com
Who is Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius was somebody who lived a very long time ago. Between 121 AD to 180 AD. His most famous feat was perhaps not that he was the emperor of Rome between 161 AD to his death in 180 AD but for his collection of private notes published as The Meditations of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Throughout history, this has come to be known as something called Stoic Philosophy. Stoicism in the dictionary is described as; “the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint”. In itself, Stoicism is known to be a lot older than Marcus Aurelius but it is something made a lot more famous by him and his quotes.
Most Famous Marcus Aurelius Meditations Quotes
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List compiled by AZQUOTES.COM – See (HERE)
1.) When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
2.) we all love ourselves more than other people, but still care more about their opinions than our own.
3.) Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
4.) The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
5.) Think of all the years passed by in which you said to yourself “I’ll do it tomorrow,” and how the gods have again and again granted you periods of grace of which you have not availed yourself. It is time to realize that you are a member of the Universe, that you are born of Nature itself, and to know that a limit has been set to your time. Use every moment wisely, to perceive your inner refulgence, or ’twill be gone and nevermore within your reach.
6.) If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
7.) You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
8.) The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
9.) The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
10.) Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
Other Marcus Aurelius Quotes
“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.”
“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.”
“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that…well, then, heap shame upon it.”
Marcus Aurelius Morning Routine Meditation
“Before you get going in the morning say to yourself, ‘Today I’ll meet people who are meddlers, ingrates, bullies, cheaters, envious and antisocial people. All of this happens because they don’t know the difference between what’s good and what’s bad.’” — Marcus Aurelius, To Himself 2.1
Taking this into consideration before you say go to work in the morning. Meditate and think about how the people you might meet may come across as unpleasant. Not only this but think that this might not be how these people mean to act. That they themselves might not realize how cranky or pretentious they are coming across as. Then with this installed inside your thoughts prepare for the rest of the day where others unwelcome actions do not interfere with your own good mood. Try Meditating about this every day for 5-10 minutes and see how this affects your interactions with people as time goes by;
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Marcus Aurelius Evening Routine
“I make use of this opportunity, daily pleading my case at my own court. When the light has been taken away and my wife has fallen silent, aware as she is of my habit, I examine my entire day, going through what I have done and said. I conceal nothing from myself, I pass nothing by. I have nothing to fear from my errors when I can say: ‘See that you do not do this anymore. For the moment, I excuse you.” SENECA
Alike the Morning Routine above is another quote born out of the writing of Marcus Aurelius. One that can be considered as something else that can be based on for an evening or nighttime Meditation. So after the Sun has faded and the night has fallen. In your own quiet time take a moment to Meditate upon what has happened to you at the end of the day.
Think about your experiences and evaluate how you can positively draw from this. Everything good and everything bad. Relax your mind and put as much of this perspective as you can and try and decide about how much of this you can bring forward to the next day and beyond. Whether it is good or bad like mentioned already either find solace in your own achievements or analyze your mistakes for reverse engineering into positive actions.
Conclusion
My final thoughts. This wasn’t my original idea to write about Marcus Aurelius. It was somebody that I hired. She didn’t give me much else but the title Marcus Aurelius Meditations Quotes but I decided to run with it. Thinking this was another guy like Deepak Chopra in the Meditation and New Age Movement. I won’t lie to find out this man had been dead for close to 2000 years it was news to me.
Anyway after going through a few of his different quotes, I kind of reluctantly decided to write this. I was beginning to conclude that Marcus Aurelius’s Quotes titled Meditations had nothing to do with Meditation at all. It actually crossed my mind to scrap this post completely if I’m being truthful.
Skip forward to the part about the Morning and Evening routine quotes. Finally, I understood that Stoic thinking could be used during meditation. In fact, what I realized was I’ve done this before without even knowing what it was. Moving forward it’s certainly something to think about for me but also please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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May the Peace Be with You x
Alex
Very interesting read. The one line that stuck out was why did he feel say that endure pain and not show complaints. Did he then mean to say that life itself is a hardship? Because if so then he probably did not have a lot of hope or he was just annoyed with being emperor haha. Hreat quotes at the bottom too.
Yes I agree for a bunch of writings that are almost 2000 years old a lot of them make very good analogies which are as true now as they was all that time ago.
I think in light of the current crisis, it is good to mediate on positive words. Not matter how bad things get, if you still have life, if you are still able to rise in the morning, it is a blessing “a privilege”. I think trying to find hope and good in difficult times is so important. Being reminded that no matter how difficult things are, you have power over your mind and if you are alive, you have reason to be grateful.
Hi Lee, Yes most definitely. I was actually given a lot of food for thought writing this article. I was about to give up on it until I found out about the morning and night routine meditations. Actually think I will try this – I don’t often end up going out for the day in the morning as i work from home so this will have to wait for me but the night meditation I would like to start trying out. How about yourself – would this be something that would interest you?