There's a line in the Meditations where Marcus Aurelius tells himself to love the people destiny has placed around him. Not tolerate them. Not manage them. Love them. And I remember reading that for the first time and thinking, Wait — this is the Stoic emperor? The guy who's supposed to be above all that?
Most people don't associate Marcus Aurelius with love. They think of discipline, duty, resilience — the armoured-up Roman emperor grinding through his journal on the frontier. But when you actually sit with the Meditations, love is everywhere. It's just not the kind we're used to talking about.
These aren't romantic quotes. They're something harder. Marcus writes about loving people who annoy you, loving a fate you didn't choose, loving work you'd rather avoid, and loving yourself enough to actually live up to what you're capable of. That last one might be the hardest of all.
I've organised these by theme because Marcus's idea of love wasn't one thing. Every quote below is verified against reputable translations (primarily Gregory Hays, George Long, and Martin Hammond), with exact book and passage numbers. If a quote doesn't have a citation, it's probably fake. More on that at the end.
Love what happens to you
Marcus never used the phrase amor fati — that was Nietzsche, centuries later. But the idea runs through everything he wrote. Not just accepting what happens, but actively choosing to love it.
"To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony." — Meditations 7.57 (Hays)
Seven words that changed how I think about difficulty. George Long's older translation reads: "Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable?" Same idea, different texture. I come back to this one when something goes wrong and I catch myself bargaining with reality. If only this hadn't happened. If only they'd said yes. Marcus's response is almost absurd in its directness: love it.
"The things ordained for you — teach yourself to be at one with those. And the people who share them with you — treat them with love. With real love." — Meditations 6.39 (Hays)
This is probably the most widely quoted Marcus Aurelius passage on love, and for good reason. Hammond's translation is equally good: "Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you." What strikes me is the phrase "real love." He felt the need to specify — as if he knew we'd try to get away with something less. A polite nod. A grudging acceptance. No. Real love.
"Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee." — Meditations 4.23 (Long)
This reads almost like a prayer. Marcus is addressing Nature directly — not complaining, not negotiating, but declaring alignment. Hays captures the opening as: "Whatever is consonant with you is consonant with me." It's one of the most lyrical passages in the Meditations, and one of the few where Marcus sounds genuinely at peace rather than fighting to get there.
"Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you." — Meditations 10.5 (Hays)
You can't love yourself and hate your fate. They're the same thread.
"He does only what is his to do, and considers constantly what the world has in store for him — doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us — and it carries us." — Meditations 3.4 (Hays)
I love the reciprocity here. Fate isn't imposed from above. It's carried — mutually, like two people leaning on each other.
Love other people (especially the difficult ones)
This is where Marcus gets genuinely radical. Stoic love isn't reserved for people who deserve it. It extends — especially — to people who don't.
"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognised that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me." — Meditations 2.1 (Hays)
The most famous passage in the Meditations. I've practised this one — literally, first thing in the morning, running through the kinds of people I'll encounter that day. What happens is strange. When someone actually is meddling or ungrateful, you've already made space for it. The surprise is gone. And without the surprise, there's room for something warmer.
"To care for all human beings is part of being human." — Meditations 3.4 (Hays)
Nine words. No room to argue with it.
"What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us." — Meditations 2.13 (Hays)
We love what shares our nature. That's the Stoic logic of compassion — not sentimental, not emotional, but rational. You love other people because you are other people. You share the same mind, the same struggles, the same confused attempts at getting through the day.
"Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe and their relation to one another. For in a manner all things are implicated with one another, and all in this way are friendly to one another." — Meditations 6.38 (Long)
The Stoic concept of sympatheia — the interconnection of everything. Marcus saw the universe as fundamentally friendly. Not hostile, not indifferent. Friendly.
"Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy." — Meditations 7.9 (Hays)
Seven words again. Marcus was at his best when he was brief.
"In a sense, people are our proper occupation." — Meditations 5.20 (Hays)
Other people aren't a distraction from your real work. They are the work.
"Humans were made to help others. And when we do help others — or help them to do something — we're doing what we were designed for." — Meditations 9.42 (Hays)
"What injures the hive injures the bee." — Meditations 6.54 (Hays)
"Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them." — Meditations 8.59 (Long)
That binary is worth sitting with. Teach them or bear with them. There's no third option where you withdraw or write people off.
Love without passion
One of the most misunderstood aspects of Stoicism. People hear "free from passion" and think it means cold. Marcus says the opposite.
"Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love." — Meditations 1.9 (Hays), describing his teacher Sextus
Long translates: "entirely free from passion, and also most affectionate." This is the Stoic ideal in a single phrase — passionless yet deeply loving. Not cold but clear. Love without the distortions of anger, fear, jealousy, or the desperate need to be loved back.
I think about this one often. Most of my worst moments in relationships haven't come from loving too little but from loving with too much stuff attached — expectations, conditions, scorekeeping. Marcus is pointing at something cleaner.
"Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings. Follow God." — Meditations 7.31 (Hays)
Long's translation is more direct: "Love mankind. Follow God." Two imperatives, side by side, same weight. Loving humanity is placed on the same level as following the divine.
"Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you… simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts." — Meditations 6.30 (Long)
Notice that "affectionate" sits alongside justice, purity, and simplicity. It's a virtue, not a weakness. Not something that happens to you but something you practise.
Love the discipline
Marcus had a complicated relationship with getting out of bed. Book 5 opens with what might be the most relatable passage in ancient philosophy.
"You don't love yourself enough. Or you'd love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat." — Meditations 5.1 (Hays)
He's scolding himself. You love comfort more than you love your purpose. And then he points at craftspeople — the sculptor who forgets lunch, the dancer who trains until her feet bleed — as proof that real love for something overrides bodily comfort.
This passage changed how I think about discipline. I used to treat it as something separate from love — discipline was the hard thing, love was the reward. Marcus collapses them. If you really loved the work, the discipline wouldn't feel like discipline.
"Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust everything willingly to the gods, and then make your way through life — no one's master and no one's slave." — Meditations 4.31 (Hays)
Long's famous version: "Love the art, poor as it may be, which thou hast learned, and be content with it." A direct command to love your work — however humble, however imperfect.
"At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: 'I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do?'" — Meditations 5.1, continued (Hays)
"To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness." — Meditations 6.7 (Hays)
The deepest delight comes not from rest but from a continuous flow of loving, unselfish work. I don't always believe that. But on the days I manage it, he's right.
Love your family
Book 1 of the Meditations is a sustained act of gratitude — Marcus listing what he learned from everyone who shaped him. It's the warmest writing in the entire text.
"From Catulus: not to spurn a friend's criticism… and to show your children unfeigned love." — Meditations 1.13 (Hays)
"Unfeigned." Not performed. Not displayed for social approval. Real.
"From my brother Severus, to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice." — Meditations 1.14 (Long)
Familial love stands alongside truth and justice — not as a softer virtue but as an equal one.
"To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good… that I have such a wife, so obedient, and so affectionate, and so simple." — Meditations 1.17 (Long)
The culmination of Book 1. Marcus thanks the gods for his entire family, including his wife Faustina. This is the most emotionally warm language in the Meditations — and a reminder that the same man who wrote about cosmic indifference and the transience of all things also wrote about gratitude for the specific, irreplaceable people in his life.
Love yourself — properly
"It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own." — Meditations 12.4 (Hays)
One of Marcus's sharpest observations. We prioritise ourselves in everything except self-knowledge and self-trust. We love ourselves enough to want comfort and safety but not enough to hold ourselves to a standard.
This hits differently depending on when you read it. The first time, it sounds like a comment about vanity. The tenth time, it sounds like a diagnosis. You claim to love yourself. Do you? Or do you love the version of yourself that other people approve of?
Love beyond anger
"The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong doer." — Meditations 6.6 (Long)
Refusing to mirror cruelty is itself an act of love — for yourself and for the other person.
"The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't." — Meditations 6.47 (Hays)
Long's version makes the love explicit: "the passing of our life in truth and justice, being benevolent even to liars and unjust men." Unconditional goodwill. Not because people deserve it, but because that's the kind of person you want to be.
"Because anger too is weakness, as much as breaking down and giving up the struggle. Both are deserters: the man who breaks and runs, and the one who lets himself be alienated from his fellow humans." — Meditations 11.9 (Hays)
Being cut off from others by anger is desertion. Marcus frames maintaining connection as a duty — something you don't get to abandon, no matter how justified your frustration feels.
The love letters to Fronto
The most emotionally intense love language Marcus Aurelius ever wrote wasn't in the Meditations. It was in his letters to his rhetoric teacher, Marcus Cornelius Fronto.
Scholar Amy Richlin, whose Marcus Aurelius in Love translates 46 early letters, calls them the only love letters to survive from antiquity. Marcus was between 18 and 24 when he wrote most of them. He addressed Fronto as "my number one delight," "breath of my life," and "my biggest thing under heaven."
Scholars debate whether the relationship was homoerotic (Richlin's reading) or an intense expression of Roman amicitia — friendship that ran deeper than anything we'd call friendship today. Either way, the contrast with the Meditations is striking. In his journal, Marcus credits Fronto soberly with teaching him about the lack of affection in the Roman upper class (Book 1.11). In his letters, he burns.
The letters matter for the blog post because they show that the author of the Meditations wasn't naturally detached. He was a deeply passionate person who chose — through years of philosophical practice — to channel that passion into something more disciplined. The Stoic calm of the Meditations wasn't a personality trait. It was an achievement.
Fake quotes to watch out for
If you've seen a Marcus Aurelius quote on love floating around Instagram, there's a decent chance it's fake. Here are the worst offenders:
"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." This is the most widely shared love-related misattribution. It was actually written by Elbert Hubbard in the early 1900s, paraphrasing ideas from Meditations 5.1. Marcus never wrote it.
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been…" A modern internet creation from around 2009. Marcus didn't question the existence of gods — he was a practising Stoic who wrote prayers to Nature.
"What we do now echoes in eternity." From the film Gladiator. Russell Crowe said it, not Marcus Aurelius.
"You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." A popular paraphrase that doesn't match any actual translation of any passage. Researcher Zachary G. Augustine traced it through chains of internet paraphrase and found no source.
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts." Semi-legitimate — it appears in a very loose 1701 translation of Meditations 3.9 but doesn't match any modern scholarly translation. Best treated as a paraphrase, not a direct quote.
Every quote in this article includes its exact book and passage number. If a quote you find elsewhere doesn't have one, be sceptical.
An exercise: practise loving what's in front of you
Marcus didn't just think about love — he practised it. Here's an exercise drawn from Meditations 6.39 that I've tested and keep coming back to.
Tomorrow morning, before you check your phone, pause for thirty seconds. Think of the specific people you'll encounter today — your partner, your colleagues, your children, the barista, the person who always replies-all to emails. For each one, silently say: This is who fate has placed in my life. I choose to meet them with real love today.
That's it. No journaling required, no twenty-minute meditation. Just a moment of deliberate orientation before the day pulls you into reactivity.
The first few times I tried this, it felt performative. I'm just saying words in my head. But something shifted after about a week. The people didn't change. I just stopped being surprised by them. And in that gap — between expectation and reality — there was something that felt a lot like the "real love" Marcus was talking about.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Marcus Aurelius write about romantic love? Not in the Meditations. His journal focuses on love of fate, love of humanity, familial affection, and love of one's work. However, his early letters to his teacher Fronto contain passionate language that some scholars interpret as romantic.
What is Marcus Aurelius's most famous quote on love? Probably Meditations 6.39: "Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you" (Hammond translation). It appears on more quote sites than any other love-related passage.
Did Marcus Aurelius believe in unconditional love? In a sense, yes. He repeatedly instructs himself to love people regardless of how they behave — including "liars and unjust men" (Meditations 6.47). But this wasn't emotional unconditional love in the modern sense. It was a rational commitment to goodwill rooted in the recognition that all humans share the same nature.
Are there fake Marcus Aurelius quotes about love? Yes — many. The most common is "When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love," which was actually written by Elbert Hubbard. Always check for a book and passage citation before trusting a Marcus Aurelius quote.
What translation of Meditations is best for quotes on love? Gregory Hays (Modern Library, 2002) is the most readable. George Long (1862) is free and widely available but more formal. Martin Hammond (Penguin, 2006) strikes a middle ground. For the Fronto letters, Amy Richlin's Marcus Aurelius in Love (University of Chicago Press, 2006) is the definitive translation.