Ancient Roman Philosophers

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

—Cicero

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

—Marcus Aurelius

The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.

—Cicero

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

—Cicero

The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another’s heart.

—Cicero

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

—Marcus Aurelius

A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

—Cicero

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

—Cicero

We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.

—Cicero

Freedom is participation in power.

—Cicero

You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

—Marcus Aurelius

I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.

—Cicero

When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love..

—Marcus Aurelius

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

—Cicero

The best answer to anger is silence.

—Marcus Aurelius

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.

—Marcus Aurelius

Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.

—Marcus Aurelius

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

—Marcus Aurelius

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

—Marcus Aurelius

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

—Marcus Aurelius

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.

—Marcus Aurelius

It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.

—Marcus Aurelius

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

—Marcus Aurelius

The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.

—Marcus Aurelius

Veni, vidi, vici.

—Julius Caesar

It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them.

—Marcus Aurelius

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

—Julius Caesar

No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.

—Cicero

Experience is the teacher of all things.

—Julius Caesar

The Celts were fearless warriors because they wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another.

—Julius Caesar