Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
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The Stoic Desk
Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and kindred Roman steel — for the wall above the work.
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly.
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.
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.
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Death smiles at us all, but all a man can do is smile back.
You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control.
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.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.
Choose not to be harmed — and you haven't been.
You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.
This accident is not a misfortune, but bearing it well turns it to an advantage.
Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place.
Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.
Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able — be good.
Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.
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.
That which is not good for the hive cannot be good for the bees.
Each of us lives only now, in this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
He who is brave is free.
Associate with people who are likely to improve you.
While we wait for life, life passes.
A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
Men are disturbed not by events, but by their opinions about events.
Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.
It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
No man is free who is not master of himself.
Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.
There is nothing permanent except change.
Character is destiny.
The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.
He merits praise who does what he ought to do, not what he is allowed to do.
The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
Time discovered truth.