Marcus Aurelius

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.

—Marcus Aurelius

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.

—Marcus Aurelius

Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’

—Marcus Aurelius

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

—Marcus Aurelius

External thinks are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.

—Marcus Aurelius

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

—Marcus Aurelius

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.

—Marcus Aurelius

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

—Marcus Aurelius

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

—Marcus Aurelius

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.

—Marcus Aurelius

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

—Marcus Aurelius

Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.

—Marcus Aurelius

For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.

—Marcus Aurelius

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

—Marcus Aurelius

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

—Marcus Aurelius

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

—Marcus Aurelius

Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.

—Marcus Aurelius

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.

—Marcus Aurelius

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

—Marcus Aurelius

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

—Marcus Aurelius

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.

—Marcus Aurelius

What we do now echoes in eternity.

—Marcus Aurelius

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

—Marcus Aurelius

Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.

—Marcus Aurelius

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.

—Marcus Aurelius

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.

—Marcus Aurelius

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

—Marcus Aurelius

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

—Marcus Aurelius

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.

—Marcus Aurelius

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

—Marcus Aurelius