30 Life Lessons From Marcus Aurelius, With Sources

Marcus Aurelius ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180 AD and spent much of that time at war or fighting a pandemic. In the evenings he wrote private notes to himself in Greek, reminding himself how to stay calm, fair and useful. Those notes, now called the Meditations, are one of the most widely read works of ancient philosophy. The thirty lessons below are drawn from them, put in plain modern English, with a reference to the book and section where each idea appears so you can look it up.

One honest warning first: many "Marcus Aurelius quotes" online are loose modern paraphrases, and a few are not his at all. We point those out as we go.

Who was Marcus Aurelius?

Born in Rome on 26 April 121, Marcus was adopted into the imperial family as a young man and became emperor in 161. For his first eight years he shared power with his adoptive brother Lucius Verus, who probably died of plague around 169. His reign was dominated by crises: a war with Parthia in the East, the long Marcomannic Wars against Germanic and Sarmatian peoples along the Danube, and the Antonine Plague, which may have killed five to ten million people across the empire. He died on 17 March 180, and his son Commodus succeeded him.

Later historians counted him as the last of the "Five Good Emperors". He had been drawn to Stoic philosophy since his youth, especially through his teacher Quintus Junius Rusticus, who introduced him to the teachings of the former slave and Stoic teacher Epictetus.

What the Meditations is, and why quotes vary

The work has no official title; the Greek manuscripts call it something like "to himself". It was almost certainly never meant for publication. Much of it was written between 170 and 180 while Marcus was on campaign, and the first book was composed among the Quadi, near the river Granova (the modern Hron in Slovakia). It is divided into twelve books of short entries, some just a line long.

Because he wrote in Greek, every English version is a translation. The first in English was Meric Casaubon's in 1634; George Long's 1862 version is free online, and Gregory Hays's 2002 translation is the most popular today. The same sentence can read very differently from one translator to the next, which is why you will find several versions of each lesson on the internet. If you want a copy to read in full, a low-cost edition of the Meditations is a good place to start.

Lessons on the mind and how we judge things

Look up. He tells himself to watch the courses of the stars as if moving with them, so that daily worries shrink to their real size (Book 7.47).
Your reactions are yours to govern. Events themselves do not reach the mind; our distress comes from the opinions we form about them. The famous "power over your mind, not outside events" line is a modern summary of this idea (Book 4.3).
Thoughts shape happiness. What you repeatedly think about colours how you feel and live (Book 5.16).
Check your first impression. He reminds himself that how things seem depends heavily on the judgement we bring to them (Book 2.15). This is the real idea behind a viral line about opinions and perspectives, which he did not write (see below).
Stop debating virtue and practise it. Talking about what a good person looks like is no substitute for being one (Book 10.16).
Make peace with your circumstances. Accept the situation life has given you, and care sincerely for the people you share it with (Book 6.39).
Start the day with purpose. In a famous passage he argues with himself about staying in bed and reminds himself he was made to do the work of a human being. Popular lines about the "privilege" of waking up are a free paraphrase (Book 5.1).
Do not copy those who hurt you. The best way to answer a wrong is to refuse to become like the person who did it (Book 6.6).
Pain comes partly from interpretation. When something outside troubles you, the trouble lies largely in your judgement of it, and that judgement can be changed (Book 8.47).
Life is what our thinking makes it. He sums this up in a short note that life is opinion (Book 4.3).

Of all his images on this theme, one of the most striking is that "the soul is dyed by the thoughts" (Book 5.16, George Long's translation). Habits of thought, in other words, gradually become the colour of who we are.

Lessons on anger, criticism and other people

Fear a wasted life more than death. The popular wording is modern, but the idea, that the real loss is never starting to live by reason, reflects the opening of Book 12 (Book 12.1).
Feed your mind well. He returns again and again to the point that our inner life takes on the quality of our thoughts (Book 5.16).
A simple test for action and speech. Act only when the deed is right, and speak only when the words are true (Book 12.17).
Welcome correction. If anyone can show him he is wrong, he will gladly change, because truth never harmed anyone; it is staying in error that harms (Book 6.21).
You need very little to live well. A good life depends far more on how you think than on what you own (Book 7.67).
Do not follow the crowd for its own sake. This lesson circulates widely, but we could not trace the popular wording to a specific passage, so treat it as an attribution rather than a quotation.
Value your own judgement. He marvels that people love themselves more than anyone, yet care more about others' opinion of them than their own (Book 12.4).
Meet the future with today's tools. Whatever comes, you will face it with the same reason you are using now (Book 7.8).
Drop the sense of injury. Remove the thought "I have been harmed" and the harm itself loses its grip (Book 4.7).
Anger costs more than its cause. The damage done by our anger is usually greater than the thing that provoked it (Book 11.18).
Look at your critics clearly. When someone blames or hates you, consider what kind of person they are; you will see there is little reason to be shaken by their opinion (Book 9.27).
First stay calm, then see clearly. Do not be disturbed, and look at the situation for exactly what it is (Book 8.5).
Before criticising, look in the mirror. Ask which of your own faults most resembles the one you are about to condemn (Book 10.30).

Lessons on time, death and duty

You do not have forever. Live as someone who will not be here for thousands of years, and be good while you still can (Book 4.17).
Strength is found within. Look inward, where there is a source of good that keeps flowing if you keep digging (Book 7.59).
Expect difficult people. Each morning he prepares himself to meet the meddling, ungrateful and arrogant, remembering that they act from ignorance of good and bad (Book 2.1).
Turn misfortune into an opportunity. When something goes wrong, remember that it is "not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune" (Book 4.49, Long's translation).
Remember what you are. Borrowing from Epictetus, he describes a person as "a little soul bearing about a corpse" (Book 4.41, Long's translation), a blunt reminder of mortality.
Mind your own conduct. Much time is saved by not watching what your neighbour says or does, and attending instead to whether your own actions are just (Book 4.18).
History repeats. Study how past kingdoms grew and collapsed, and the pattern of what is coming becomes easier to see (Book 7.49).

A quote Marcus Aurelius never wrote

The most shared "Marcus Aurelius quote" online claims that everything we hear is an opinion and everything we see is a perspective. It does not appear in the Meditations. PolitiFact and the Modern Stoicism project both looked for a source and found none. It also clashes with Stoic thinking: Marcus believed some judgements are true and others false, and the whole point of his notes is learning to tell the difference. The genuine idea closest to it is his short reminder in Book 2.15 that things are as we judge them to be.

A simple rule helps when you meet a quote online: if it comes with no book number, search for a key phrase in a public-domain translation such as George Long's. If nothing close turns up, treat it as "attributed" rather than authentic.

How to use these lessons today

The Meditations was a private training notebook, and it works best when used that way. Pick one lesson a week and write a line about where it applied in your own day. Many readers find the morning preparation of Book 2.1 and the advice on anger in Book 11 especially practical. Modern cognitive behavioural therapy owes a debt to Stoic ideas about how judgements shape emotions, which is one reason these notes still feel so current nearly two thousand years later.

If you would like a printed copy to annotate, the inexpensive Dover edition of the Meditations is light enough to carry around.

Sources: The Meditations, translated by George Long (MIT Internet Classics Archive); Wikipedia: Marcus Aurelius; Wikipedia: Meditations; PolitiFact: No, Marcus Aurelius didn't say that; Modern Stoicism.

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