Marcus Aurelius

“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”

“If something is difficult for you to accomplish, do not then think it impossible for any human being; rather, if it is humanly possible and corresponds to human nature, know that it is attainable by you as well.”

“Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.”

“When you arise in the moring, think of what a precious privelege it is to be alive-- to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love”

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

“Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.”

“Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'”

“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.”

“Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.”

“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?”

“Will any man despise me? Let him see to it. But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that deserves to be despised.”

“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.”

“Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”

“Never let the future disturb you - you will meet it with the same weapons of reason and mind that, today, guard you against the present...”

“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”

“Men exist for the sake of one another.”

“Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”

“Nothing is more scandalous than a man that is proud of his humility.”

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

“The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow? Only one thing, philosophy. And philosophy doth consist in this, for a man to preserve that spirit which is within him, from all manner of contumelies and injuries, and above all pains or pleasures; never to do anything either rashly, or feignedly, or hypocritically: only to depend from himself, and his own proper actions: all things that happen unto him to embrace contentendly, as coming from Him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to expect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of those elements, of which every creature is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution, and alteration, which is so common unto all, why should it be feared by any? Is not this according to nature? But nothing that is according to nature can be evil.”