Marcus Aurelius Quotes

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

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.

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

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

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.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new strategy.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.

Your life is what your thoughts make it.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

A man's life is what his thoughts make of it.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Do every act of your life as if it were your last.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you.

Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.

I have often wondered how it is everyone loves himself more than the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than the opinions of others.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

What we cannot bear removes us from life; what remains can be borne.

If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.

Men exist for the sake of one another.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.