Marcus Aurelius

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

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.

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

If you are able, correct by teaching; if not, by tolerating.

The faculty of reason is the only one which can contemplate itself, and by itself distinguish truth from falsehood, and the real from the unreal.

Soon you'll be ashes or a skeleton. A name at most, or not even a name. But name is sound and echo. The things we want in life are empty, foul, or trivial. Like dogs snapping at each other, or children squabbling, laughing, and then crying. But honesty, decency, justice, and truth are clear. If you find peace in these, then you are a happy man.

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 and evil.

How many have been afraid of death and yet have died laughing?

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, possessed of a share of the divine. And so I cannot be harmed by any of them, as no one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To work against each other is unnatural. And to feel anger at him, to turn your back on him: that is unnatural.

Consider the life of a man of forty, and the life of a man of ten thousand years; what difference is there? For both the past is gone, and the future is uncertain.

To endure is the first thing that a man must learn if he is to achieve anything, or if he is to live at all.

That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bees.

The present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is all he has and that he cannot lose what he does not possess.

Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What's closer to nature's heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? How can any action be accomplished without change? Don't you see? Your own transformation is just as necessary to nature as theirs.

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not the thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now.

Everything that happens, happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

To love only what happens, what was spun for you. What could be more appropriate?

Do not disturb yourself by picturing your entire life. Do not let your thoughts range over all the various troubles which you have met and will meet, but in every present case, ask yourself, 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it!

The universe is a stream of things, a river of events. Some things are born, others die. Some things are in motion, others at rest. Some things are changing, others are constant. Some things are good, others evil. Some things are beautiful, others ugly. Some things are true, others false. Some things are just, others unjust. Some things are useful, others useless. Some things are necessary, others unnecessary. Some things are pleasant, others unpleasant. Some things are easy, others difficult. Some things are possible, others impossible. All these things exist and flow in the universe. Do not cling to them, do not resist them, do not judge them. Just observe them and let them pass.