Marcus Aurelius

Let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind.

Everything—a horse, a vine—is created for some duty... For what task, then, were you yourself created? A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.

Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.

Let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind.

A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for.

Everything, a horse, a vine, is created for some duty. For what task, then, were you yourself created? A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for.

I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.

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

Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses…

Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.

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.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

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

How ridiculous not to flee from one’s own wickedness, which is possible, yet endeavor to flee from another’s which is not.

Keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, and unassuming; the friend of justice and godliness; kindly, affectionate, and resolute in your devotion to duty.

Cultivate these, then, for they are wholly within your power: sincerity and dignity; industriousness, and sobriety. Avoid grumbling, be frugal, considerate, and frank; be temperate in manner and speech; carry yourself with authority.

Your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.

To live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing—here is the perfection of character.

You should banish any thoughts of how you may appear to others.

The whole universe is change, and life itself is but what you deem it.

So here is a rule to remember in the future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, ‘This is a misfortune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is a good fortune.’

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.

Is it possible for any useful thing to be accomplished without change?

The impediment to action advances the action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

All the happiness you are seeking by such long, roundabout ways: you can have it all right now ... I mean, if you leave all of the past behind you, if you abandon the future to providence, and if you arrange the present in accordance with piety and justice.

Your only joy, your only rest: let it be to pass from one action performed in the service of the community to another action performed for the service of the community, together with the remembrance of God.

All provocations given by unthinking people—and it is only from the unthinking that they can come—should be ignored, and the insults and honors of the crowd should both be valued the same. We must not be pained by the one or rejoice over the other; otherwise—whether from fear of insults or disgust with them—we will neglect many things.

If something is difficult, don’t conclude too quickly that it’s impossible. It’s better to assume that whatever is possible at all is within your personal reach as well.

Live each day as if it be your last.

Clearly, no situation is better suited for the practice of philosophy than the one you’re in right now.

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