Marcus Aurelius
In the same degree in which a man's mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength.Collection: Anger
Do not suffer a sudden impression to overbear your judgment.Collection: Suffering
If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance.Collection: Home
If any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.Collection: Men
The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.Collection: Happiness
No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor does one live any other life than that which he will lose.Collection: Doe
For any particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature?Collection: Lambs
Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.Collection: Work
A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.Collection: Men
Outward objects cannot take hold of the soul, nor force their passage into her, nor set any of her wheels going. No, the impression comes from herself, and it is her own motions which affect her. As for the contingencies of fortune, they are either great or little, according to the opinion she has of her own strength.Collection: Soul
Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before.Collection: Inspirational
Think nothing profitable to you which compels you to break a promise, to lose your self respect, to hate any person, to curse, to act the hypocrite.Collection: Hate
The things... which are proper to the understanding no other man is used to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way. When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere.Collection: Men
In man's life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; fortune a thing inscrutable, and fame precarious.Collection: Life
So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.Collection: Thinking
It is right that man should love those who have offended him. He will do so when he remembers that all men are his relations, and that it is through ignorance and involuntarily that they sin,--and then we all die so soon.Collection: Forgiveness
From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations.Collection: Writing
It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.Collection: Past
Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.Collection: Morrow
Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within.Collection: Soul
The gods sustain and guide all their works.Collection: Guides
But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.Collection: Attitude
I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found himself a happy lot. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice.Collection: Happiness
... Allow yourself a space of quiet, wherein you can add to your knowledge of the Good and learn to curb your restlessness. Guard also against another kind of error: the folly of those who weary their days in much business, but lack any aim on which their whole effort, nay, their whole thought, is focused.Collection: Space
One universe made up all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth.Collection: God
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.Collection: Life
Remind oneself continually of one of those who practiced virtue in days gone by.Collection: Days Gone By
Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.Collection: Book
Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.Collection: Life
And yet, after all, what is posthumous fame? Altogether vanity.Collection: Vanity
It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.Collection: Men
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; and to be always the same, in sharp pains, on the occasion of the loss of a child, and in long illness.Collection: Looks
As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.Collection: Hands
Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.Collection: Death
How soon will time cover all things.Collection: All Things
All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. C. S. LEWIS, The Four Loves Life is short. Eternity is long. BENTLEY LITTLE, His Father's Son What we do now echoes in eternity.Collection: Father
Life is a stranger's sojourn, a night at an inn.Collection: Night
If you do the task before you always adhering to strict reason with zeal and energy and yet with humanity, disregarding all lesser ends and keeping the divinity within you pure and upright, as though you were even now faced with its recall - if you hold steadily to this, staying for nothing and shrinking from nothing, only seeking in each passing action a conformity with nature and in each word and utterance a fearless truthfulness, then the good life shall be yours. And from this course no man has the power to hold you back.Collection: Good Life
He that lives alone lives in danger; society avoids many dangers.Collection: Solitude
Put an end once and for all to this discussion of what a good person should be, and be one.Collection: Good Person
If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.Collection: Inspirational
Nature has given to each conscious being every power she possesses, and one of these abilities is this: just as Nature converts and alters every obstacle and opposition, and fits them into their predestined place, making them a part of herself, so too the rational person is able to finesse every obstacle into an opportunity, and to use it for whatever purpose it may suit.Collection: Nature
The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.Collection: Positive
The world is a living being - one nature, one soul. Keep that in mind.Collection: Soul
...the infallible man does not exist.Collection: Men
Do what you will. Even if you tear yourself apart, most people will continue doing the same things.Collection: Inspirational
Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.Collection: Taken