121–180

Marcus Aurelius

Roman emperor and Stoic. He wrote his Meditations at night in camp, for himself alone. That is precisely why they remain the most honest handbook for a quiet mind.

“You have power over your mind, not over outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“When you wake in the morning, remember what a precious gift it is to be alive: to breathe, to think, to feel, to love.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Very little is needed to live a happy life. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“It is not death that a man should fear, but never beginning to live.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“What does not benefit the swarm does not benefit the bee either.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Soon you will have forgotten everything, and soon everyone will have forgotten you.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Do not torment yourself with the future. You will meet it, if you must, with the same reason that serves you in the present.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The best way to avenge yourself: do not become like the one who did the wrong.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Dig within yourself. Within lies the wellspring of good, and it can always flow again if you keep digging.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“People look for retreats: in the country, by the sea, in the mountains. Yet you are free to retreat into yourself at any hour.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Do not live as though you had ten thousand years before you. While you live, while you can: be good.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Say to yourself at dawn: today I will meet the ungrateful, the arrogant, the envious. None of them can harm me.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing: you must stand ready for what comes unannounced.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“No one loses any life other than the one they live, nor lives any other than the one they lose.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Stop arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“How absurd not to flee your own conduct, which is possible, and to flee another's, which is not.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Look within. There is the source of good, and it will ever bubble up if you will ever dig.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The best revenge is to be unlike the one who did the wrong.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The world is change, life is opinion.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Where it is possible to live, it is possible to live well.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Do not waste the rest of your life thinking about other people.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“You can drop any tormenting thought at any moment and be at once in complete calm.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“Everything that happens happens either as you can bear it, or as you cannot.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations

English renderings made for this site. A few passages are widely circulated free versions and therefore carry no reference.