Marcus Aurelius Quotes

The more things change, the more they are the same.

What once happened will invariably happen again, when the same circumstances which combined to produce it, shall combine in the same way.

The more change, the more it's the same thing.

What always was must always be.

Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.

This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders.

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.

There is no suspense in inevitability.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, everything that will be has been.

When you're doing something every week, it's kind of routine.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The rain, it raineth every day.

Doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days. Along toward the middle of the month a fellow begins to long for a broiled crow or a slice of cold dog.

The only thing I hate worse than prophecy is self-fulfilling prophecy

It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.

The wheel weaves as the wheel wills

All things from eternity are of like forms and come round in circle.

Don’t be surprised. There is nothing new under the sun. Only endless repackagings

The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.

Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.

In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.

There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.