Source identified1
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“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
Meaning & context
Retaliation is rejected when it would reproduce the very behavior one condemns.
Source details
Meditations 6.6; wording varies by translation.
Author & topic collection
Marcus Aurelius Quotes About Success
Browse 6 quotations connecting Marcus Aurelius with Success, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Sources
Where these success quotations appear
Sources represented here include Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations.
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Quotations
6 matching quotations with meanings and source context
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“Thou must be like a promontory of the sea, against which though the waves beat continually, yet it stands.”
Meaning & context
The image recommends steadiness under repeated pressure: external disturbance can arrive continuously without requiring inner collapse.
Source details
Meditations, Book IV, section XL, Meric Casaubon translation represented by Project Gutenberg #2680. The promontory image recommends steadiness under repeated disturbance. The frozen catalog wording shortens the represented witness after “yet it”: Gutenberg reads “yet it both itself stands, and about it are those swelling waves stilled and quieted.” This remains translation-mediated Roman Stoic moral philosophy, not a modern clinical resilience finding.
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“First, do nothing inconsiderately, nor without a purpose.”
Meaning & context
Deliberate action begins by knowing why an act is being done instead of moving from impulse, distraction, or social pressure.
Source details
Meditations, Book XII, section 20, George Long translation.
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“The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s.”
Meaning & context
Life requires readiness for unexpected pressure, closer to maintaining balance in a contest than performing a fully choreographed sequence.
Source details
Meditations, Book VII, section 61, George Long translation; the full sentence emphasizes readiness for sudden and unexpected onsets.
Source identified5
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“Practise thyself even in the things which thou despairest of accomplishing.”
Meaning & context
Practice is offered as an answer to discouragement: inability today does not establish permanent inability when the skill itself can be trained.
Source details
Meditations, Book XII, section 6, George Long translation.
Source identified6
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“He who has not one and always the same object in life cannot remain one and the same.”
Meaning & context
A stable guiding aim can organize choices over time and prevent priorities from changing with every pressure.
Source details
Meditations, Book XI, in George Long’s translation; punctuation has been lightly modernized.
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