Marcus Aurelius Daily

Stoicism, Poetry, Literature, Philosophy and Quotes

[marcusalldaylius]

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night   Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:  And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky, I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry, ' Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup, Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry.' And as the Cock crew, those who stood before The Tavern shouted- 'Open then the Door! You know how little while we have to stay, And, once departed, may return no more.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

[marcusalldaylius]

He who is dissatisfied with what he has and what has been given him by fortune is a layman in the art of living, but the man who bears all this in a noble spirit and makes a reasonable use of all that comes from it deserves to be considered a good man

Epictetus, Fragments 

[marcusalldaylius]

All things obey and serve the Cosmos, both earth, and sea, and sun, and the other stars... to act against it is to side with unreason, and while accomplishing nothing but a vain struggle, it involves us in pains and sorrows.

Epictetus, Fragments

[marcusalldaylius]

For what in human life would seem great to one who has grasped the magnitude of all eternity and of the entire universe? What concern within the brief lifespan of a human could seem important? So constant is his vigilance that nothing unforeseen can happen to him, nothing which he does not anticipate, nothing strange at all.

- Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4.37

[marcusalldaylius]

Thus he spoke; but they were all hushed and silent and were held spellbound throughout the shadowy halls.

Musonius Rufus, Fragment XLIX

[marcusalldaylius]

Think always of the Universe as one living creature, made of one substance and one soul: how all is absorbed into this one consciousness; how a single impulse governs all its actions; how all things collaborate in all that happens; the very web and mesh of it all.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.40

[marcusalldaylius]

To become attached to our body and its travails is to be confused about a central fact of our own identity; it is a failure of self-knowledge.

Tad Brennan (2005), p.131

[marcusalldaylius]

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and it is not the same man.”

— Heraclitus

[marcusalldaylius]

If you want the pearl, Leave the inland desert, And wander by the sea. Even if you don't find it, at least you've been near the water.

Sanai, Energetic Work

[marcusalldaylius]

“All cruelty springs from weakness of the soul.”

— Seneca

[marcusalldaylius]

We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come.

- Carlo Rovelli

[marcusalldaylius]

“First, realise what you would be, then do what you must.”

— Epictetus

[marcusalldaylius]

In the name of Love,

We shattered our dreams,

And found they were hollow all along.

We did not even try to piece them back together.

Cowards.

[marcusalldaylius]

If you observe the hasting sun and watch The stars processing through the skies, the day That follows will not prove you wrong...

Virgil - Georgics

[marcusalldaylius]

The soul is our sense of connection to the world around us, strong or weak. The things that are good for the soul; reading, travelling, walking, meeting new people, loving one another, these develop our understanding of the ‘other’. The purpose of the soul is to help us to realise that the self and the ‘other’ are one and the same, and that our borders extend far beyond ourselves.

[marcusalldaylius]

There is not a single grain of dust in the Universe that is out of place.

Alan Watts

[marcusalldaylius]

We are whispers and shadow. We are dust, held together by the dream of tomorrow.