Marcus Aurelius
Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, 'Is this necessary?'Collection: Focus
What we do in life ripples in eternity.Collection: Eternity
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.Collection: Life
Both happiness and unhappiness depend on perceptionCollection: Perception
The inner master, when confronted with an obstacle, uses it as fuel, like a fire which consumes things that are thrown into it. A small lamp would be snuffed out, but a big fire will engulf what is thrown at it and burn hotter; it consumes the obstacle and uses it to reach a higher level.Collection: Fire
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.Collection: Inspirational
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.Collection: Motivational
I'm going to be meeting with people today who talk too much - people who are selfish, egotistical, ungrateful. But I won't be surprised or disturbed, for I can't imagine a world without such people.Collection: Selfish
No one was ever injured by the truth; but he who persists in self-deception and ignorance is injured.Collection: Ignorance
Nothing befalls any man which he is not fitted to endure.Collection: Men
The most complete revenge is not to imitate the aggressor.Collection: Revenge
What does not benefit the hive is no benefit to the bee.Collection: Doe
So much worse are the consequences of anger than its causes.Collection: Causes
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.Collection: Soul
You should banish any thoughts of how you may appear to others.Collection: May
Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together.Collection: Morning
Your life is an expression of all your thoughts.Collection: Life
Whoever values peace of mind and the health of the soul will live the best of all possible lives.Collection: Peace
A person's life is dyed with the color of his imagination.Collection: Life
Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.Collection: Men
The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.Collection: Character
Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die.Collection: Looks
The mind in itself wants nothing, unless it creates a want for itself; therefore it is both free from perturbation and unimpeded, if it does not perturb and impede itself.Collection: Mind
Let thine occupations be few, saith the sage, if thou wouldst lead a tranquil life.Collection: Life
Just consider, my friend, whether a pure spirit and virtue are anything other than saving your life and being saved. Perhaps we need to discard the idea of longevity and cease loving this life, instead committing these things to God and, believing that no one ever escapes destiny, to consider, with that in mind, how we may live the best possible life in the time that remains.Collection: Life
If it's time for you to go, leave willingly - as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor.Collection: Grace
Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it.Collection: Earth
Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.Collection: Thee
Why dost thou not pray... to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?Collection: Giving
In the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that the pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bear in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination.Collection: Pain
From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose; and to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason.Collection: Atheism
Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.Collection: Imagination
No longer let thy breathing only act in concert with the air which surrounds thee, but let thy intelligence also now be in harmony with the intelligence which embraces all things. For the intelligent power is no less diffused in all parts and pervades all things for him who is willing to draw it to him than the aërial power for him who is able to respire it.Collection: Intelligent
Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.Collection: Principles
There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.Collection: Men
But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you choose to retire into yourself.Collection: Self Esteem
Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life, - there, if one must speak out, the real man.Collection: Life
A man should be upright, not kept upright.Collection: Truth
Take the shortest route. The one that nature planned - to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculations and pretension.Collection: Pain
As thou thyself art a component part of a social system, so let every act of thine be a component part of social life. Whatever act of thine that has no reference, either immediately or remotely, to a social end, this tears asunder thy life, and does not allow it to be one, and it is of the nature of a mutiny, just as when in a popular assembly a man acting by himself stands apart from the general agreement.Collection: Art
Let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind.Collection: Community
Not to waste time on nonsense. Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it. Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that.Collection: Taken
It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.Collection: Mind
From my grandfather's father, I learned to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.Collection: Teacher
This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole.Collection: Mind
Does the light of the lamp shine without losing its splendour until it is extinguished; and shall the truth which is in thee and justice and temperance be extinguished before thy death?Collection: Light
Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.Collection: Order
And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen.Collection: Order