Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your own character, who's stopping you from setting your mind straight? And if it's that you're not doing something you think you should be, why not just do it? —But there are insuperable obstacles. Then it's not a problem. The cause of your inaction lies outside you.

Does what's happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person's nature to fulfill itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.

How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them;

He is poor, who has need of another, and has not from himself all things that are useful for life.

I have no right to do myself an injury. Have I ever injured anyone else if I could avoid it?

Whatsoever he said, all men believed him that as he spake, so he thought, and whatsoever he did, that he did it with a good intent.

In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou also be governed by it.

Love all people, including those who do wrong. They may be acting unintentionally, out of ignorance. Even if they are acting intentionally, they can't harm you—that is, they can't make you a worse person than before. Only you can harm yourself, by fanning the flames of hatred and resentment. When someone wrongs you, identify the mistaken ideas that motivated their behavior. Then, instead of being angry, you'll pity them.

Nature is pliable, obedient. And the logos that governs it has no reason to do evil. It knows no evil, does none, and causes harm to nothing. It dictates all beginnings and all endings.

As the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.

States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers. —PLATO, The Republic