Marcus Aurelius Quotes

I think we ought to give ourselves more time. We should be more patient with ourselves and with each other.

I was so obsessed and consumed with my grievances that I could not get away from myself and think things out in the light. I was in the grip of that blinding, destructive, terrible thing -- righteous indignation.

If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him, for you are worse than he thinks you to be.

Do not be reactive and vengeful and if you look deeply into your anguish, you will see that it is the anguish of our wounded collective soul.

I was once a fairly angry person.

Compassion is the key to living outside the confines of your lower self.

When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.

We think too much and feel too little.

It's good for everyone to understand that they are to love their enemies, simply because your enemies show you things about yourself you need to change. So in actuality enemies are friends in reverse.

I was forced, more or less, to go to anger management. I was either going to make myself and everyone around me miserable, or I was going to realize that there's more than one person on this Earth. It definitely has made me a better person.

I spent 43 years of my life in anger and I know what it can do... Now I pray a lot. I do whatever I need to do to keep me out of that anger, out of that place where I can't grow and be better.

I've learned a lot. Being more compassionate.

We are here to love, not to judge. I'd been blaming and raging. I certainly wasn't loving my daughter that afternoon as God loves me. God's love doesn't insist on perfection or even good common sense. Why then should I demand more of those I love? With this tiny change in perspective I began to see the need for correction wasn't in my daughter, but in me.

We all have weaknesses. But I have figured that others have put up with mine so tolerably that I would be much less than fair not to make a reasonable discount for theirs.

The first step to loving someone else is to recognize the evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.

In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self.

When anyone hurts us, my wife and I sit in our Japanese sand garden and drink iced tea. There are five stone in the garden - for sky, wind, fire, water, and earth. We sit and think of five of the nicest things we can about the person who hurt us. If he hurts us a second time, we do the same thing. The third time, we light a candle, and he is, for us, dead.

Love must be learned again and again... Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves. Now, if we stop thinking about ourselves for a while and begin to think of the other person's good points, we won't have to resort to flattery so cheap and false that it can be spotted almost before it is out of the mouth.

I'm sensitive to how people are feeling if they feel like they got it wrong, and sensitive to the people who are kind of gloating that they knew all along, they figured it out. I'm loving them through this process, because I know that it took me a while once I found out that it was me.

I think it would do a lot of people good just to realize how vulnerable they are.

You many have noticed I have a temper ... but when I calmed down, I realized that this world, blighted and imperfect as it is, would be better with you in it.

I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am.

I think your resources are feeling. Your resources are depth. Your resources are learning. Your resources are touching and feeling. And for me, sobriety helps and aids all of that.

When we take time to quiet ourselves, we can all sense that our life could be lived with greater compassion and greater weakness.