After the first part About Life and Death and the second part About Life and Ethics below I’ll continue with quotes regarding About Life and Emotions. This is the final part of the series about the book “The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius”.
As a Roman emperor and Stoic, Marcus Aurelius is known for his thoughts and life wisdom, which still inspire many people today. His reflections on life, death, and human nature are definetely timeless.
7 quotes about life and emotions
Do you want to? then listen to this: Do not get upset and always stay with yourself. If someone has transgressed against you, he has transgressed against himself. If something sad has happened to you: it was destined for you from the beginning; everything that happens is destiny. And all in all: life is short.
It is not in the soul of another that makes you unhappy, nor in the turn of your external circumstances. Where then, you ask? In your judgment! Do not think it a misfortune, and all will be well. And if what at first surrounds you, your skin is wounded, cut, burned, that part of your being which judges such things must be at rest, that is, it must think that what can affect the good as well as the bad cannot possibly constitute our misfortune or our happiness.
If something happens in your surroundings that upsets and outrages you, withdraw into yourself quickly and do not give in unduly to the impressions that jeopardize your attitude. The more often we know how to regain the harmonious mood of the soul, the more capable we become of maintaining it.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” ~ Shakespeare
As soon as someone has hurt you, you must immediately examine what view of good and evil made him do it. For as soon as this becomes clear to you, you will feel compassion for him and neither be surprised nor angry. Either you will find that you have no essentially different view of good from his, and then you must forgive him. Or you see the difference; but then it is not so difficult to remain kind to him who has erred.
Forgiveness is often possible when one recognizes that one’s own ideas of good and evil do not necessarily differ from those of others.
The sensually perceptible objects are beyond us. They stand alone, so to speak, outside our door. They know nothing about themselves, nor do they judge themselves. So who judges them? The dominant part of our soul.
The power of judgment over things lies with our own mind. Our reality is our constructed world.
Do not forget that where you live you have quite the same as you would have in the mountains or by the sea or anywhere else you long to go. The shepherd, says Plato, who thus grazes by his fence on the mountain, feels no differently than he who is surrounded by a city wall.
Our external environment ultimately has less influence on our inner well-being than our own attitude towards it. The true source of our inner state lies within our own mind, regardless of external circumstances.
And further, that it is not those actions that make us complain, but the ideas we have about them. Send them home and your anger will subside. But how? By considering that what happens to you through them is in truth nothing bad. If it were bad, you yourself would necessarily have been made bad by it." And further, that anger and displeasure at such things weigh us down much more than the things at which you are angry. And finally, that a loving mind, if its love is truly genuine and unfeigned, can be overcome by nothing.
Our reactions and feelings are primarily dependent on our own thoughts and interpretations.
All quotes used in this post come from the work “The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius”. This book, also known as Self-Contemplations, was written by Emperor Marcus Aurelius and is a collection of personal notes and philosophical reflections. It is one of the most important works of Stoic philosophy.