Marcus Aurelius

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.

There is a stream of things entering into being, and time is a raging torment; for no sooner does each thing enter our sight than it has been swept away, and another is passing in it's place, and that too will be swept away.

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

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.

One whose chief regard is for his own mind, and for the divinity within him and the service of its goodness, will strike no poses, utter no complaints, and crave neither for solitude nor yet for a crowd. Best of all, his life will be free from continual pursuing and avoiding.

Because a thing is difficult for you, do not therefore suppose it to be beyond mortal power. On the contrary, if anything is possible and proper for man to do, assume that it must fall within your own capacity.

All of us are working together for the same end; some of us knowingly and purposefully, others unconsciously.

It is a sin to persue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as a evil.

The sinners sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.

A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission.

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

Virtue they will but abuse, and taunt her with bitter revilling.

All the blessings which you pray to obtain hereafter could be yours today, if you did not deny them to yourself.

Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. All things are petty, easily changed, and vanishing away.

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.

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

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

All is ephemeral--fame and the famous as well.

Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

In the life of a man, his time is but a moment...his sense, a dim rushlight. All that is body is as coursing waters...all that is of the soul, as dreams, and vapors.

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

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe love nothing so much as to change. The Universe is change.

Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.

The wise man learns more from the fool than the fool learns from the wise man.

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.

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

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