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Everything is banal in experience, fleeting in duration, sordid in content in all respects the same today as generations now dead and buried have found it to be.

Marcus Aurelius

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Marcus Aurelius
Philosopher
Politician
Roman Emperor
Writer
The Eternal City
Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius
Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Marcus Annius Verus
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Content
Generations
Dead
Sordid
Experience
Banal
Found
Duration
Today
Respects
Everything
Fleeting
Buried

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Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee, what can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just?
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Thanks to the gods I didn't spend much time while growing up with my grandfather's mistress and preserved the flower of my youth, waiting for the proper time to demonstrate my virility.
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Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.
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Every man's life lies within the present for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.
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For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.
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It will suffice thee to remember as concerning pain ... that the mind may, by stopping all manner of commerce and sympathy with the body, still retain its own tranquility.
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You need to be prepared for firm decisions and action, without losing gentleness towards those who obstruct or abuse you. It's as great a weakness to be angry with them as it is to abandon your plan of action and give up through fear.
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If any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.
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It is not right to vex ourselves at things, for they care not about it.
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God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose.
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For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.
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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.
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The stone that is thrown into the air is none the worse for falling down, and none the better for going up.
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Tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.
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The stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being.
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Reflect often upon the rapidity with which all existing things, or things coming into existence, sweep past us and are carried away.
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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.
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Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.
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Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.
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No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess? ... It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.
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