Marcus Aurelius

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars in the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, 'And why were such things made?'

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

Every soul, the philosopher says, is unwillingly deprived of truth.

Soon you'll be ashes or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; but name is sound and echo, and the things we value so highly in life are empty and rotten and paltry, and like little dogs biting one another, and little children quarreling, crying, and then laughing. But loyalty and modesty and justice and truth are fled 'up to Olympus from the wide-pathed earth.' What then is there to hold you back?

That which is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

The soul of man does violence to itself, first of all, when it becomes an abscess and, as it were, a tumour on the universe, so far as it can.

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.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change existing things and to make new things like them.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or still uncertain. Short is the life of man, and short is the span of his pleasure, and short is his pain.

The universal cause is a torrent. And how trivial are all things which are done in a state which is subject to change, and in what a sphere of things which are perishing!

When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight.

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

Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

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

Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not embrace in your imagination all the various troubles which are likely to befall you, but rather, at every accession of trouble, ask yourself, 'What is there in this that is intolerable and past bearing?'

Because your life is not a series of unconnected periods, but a single, continuous stream, it is only in the present that you truly live.