Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
classical · stoicism
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus · 121–180
Roman emperor and Stoic whose private notes, the Meditations, treat duty, opinion, and death as daily work. The collection's most printable moralist.
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
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.
The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
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.