If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
¶ (Attributed)
Quotations by ...
Marcus Aureleus (121-180) Roman emperor (161-180)
Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
¶ (Attributed)
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
¶ (Attributed)
Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect.
¶ (Attributed)
The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
¶ (Attributed)
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
¶ (Attributed)
The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
¶ (Attributed)
The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
¶ (Attributed)
A candor affected is a dagger concealed.
¶ (Attributed)
If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.
¶ (Attributed)
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 the things which are, and to make new things like them.
¶ (Attributed)
Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
¶ (Attributed)
The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
¶ (Attributed)
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
¶ (Attributed)
Always think of the universe as one living organism, with a single substance and a single soul.
¶ Meditations, 4.40 (tr. Maxwell Staniforth, 1964)
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