Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

Remember how long thou hast already put off these things, and how

Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.

To change your experience, change your opinion. If you're upset by something outside you, it's not the thing itself that upsets you, but your opinion of it. And it's in your power to wipe away that opinion immediately.

Stupidity is expecting figs in winter, or children in old age.

Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.

Treat what you don't have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you'd crave them if you didn't have them. But be careful. Don't feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them—that it would upset you to lose them.

Not the "not" but the "not yet.

You've given aid and they've received it. And yet, like an idiot, you keep holding out for more: to be credited with a Good Deed, to be repaid in kind. Why?

A human being has close kinship with the whole human race -- not a bond of blood or seed, but a community of mind. And you have forgotten this too, that every man's mind is a god and has flowed from that source; that nothing is our own property, but even our child, our body, our very soul have come from that source; that all is as thinking makes it so; that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose.

A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You're better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.

The end and object of a rational constitution is, to do nothing rashly, to be kindly affected towards men, and in all things willingly to submit unto the gods. Casting therefore all other things aside, keep thyself to these few, and remember withal that no man properly can be said to live more than that which is now present, which is but a moment of time.

He who eats my bread does my will.