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"Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own."
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"I always say, if you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips."
"There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
"Here is your great soul-the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself."
"My dear Scipio and Laelius. Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable."
"Someone has to be stoic, for the sake of, in spite of, and in the face of all those who are, not. Someone, has to be serious. Someone has to choose to forgo choice, so that there is an option left for others to consider. Everyone can't be, someone."
"If we live we live if we die we die if we suffer we suffer if we are terrified we are terrified. There is no problem about it."
Explore more quotes by Marcus Aurelius
"What am I but a little flesh, a little breath, and the thinking part that rules the whole?"
"Observe the movements of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground."
"Things of themselves cannot touch the soul at all. They have no entry to the soul, and cannot turn or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself, making all externals presented to it cohere with the judgements it thinks worthy of itself."
"You should always be ready to apply these two rules of action, the first, to do nothing other than what the kingly and law-making art ordains for the benefits of humankind, and, the second, to be prepared to change your mind if someone is at hand to put you right and guide you away from some groundless opinion."
"Think not so much of what you lack as of what you have: but of the things that you have, select the best, and then reflect on how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them."
"When you are disturbed by events and lose your serenity, quickly return to yourself and don't stay upset longer than the experience lasts; for you'll have more mastery over your inner harmony by continually returning to it."
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