Marcus Aurelius

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Welcome every experience the looms of fate may weave for you.

Dig inside. Inside is the fountain of good, and it will forever flow, if you will forever dig.

A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all - that is myself.

When pain is unbearable it destroys us; when it does not it is bearable.

When you are annoyed at someone's mistake, immediately look at yourself and reflect how you also fail; for example, in thinking that good equals money, or pleasure, or a bit of fame. By being mindful of this you'll quickly forget your anger, especially if you realize that the person was under stress, and could do little else. And, if you can, find a way to alleviate that stress.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.

Let no act be done without purpose.

A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.

You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend...or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.

Take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Either an ordered Universe or a medley heaped together mechanically but still an order; or can order subsist in you and disorder in the Whole! And that, too, when all things are so distinguished and yet intermingled and sympathetic.

Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

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.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.