Don't tell yourself anything more than what the initial impressions report. It's been reported to you that someone is speaking badly about you. This is the report - the report wasn't that you've been harmed. I see that my son is sick - but not that his life is at risk. So always stay within your first impressions, and don't add to them in your head - this way nothing can happen to you.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

Enough of this miserable, whining life. Stop monkeying around! Why are you troubled? What's new here? What's so confounding? The one responsible? Take a good look. Or just the matter itself? Then look at that. There's nothing else to look at. And as far as the gods go, by now you could try being more straightforward and kind. It's the same, whether you've examined these things for a hundred years, or only three.

Keep this thought handy when you feel a bit of rage coming on - it isn't manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real person doesn't give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance - unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.

Drama, combat, terror, numbness, and subservience - every day these things wipe out your sacred principles, whenever your mind entertains them uncritically or lets them slip in.

I'm constantly amazed by how easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self....How much credence we give to the opinions our peers have of us and how little to our very own!

Does the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn't your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?

Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone's lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.

Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look at the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?

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 can't 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 or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.

Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.

In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; "I am rising to a man's work."

Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.

Find time still to be learning somewhat good, and give up being desultory.

Marcus Aurelius wrote the following about Severus (a person who is not clearly identifiable according to the footnote): Through him [...] I became acquainted with the conception of a community based on equality and freedom of speech for all, and of a monarchy concerned primarily to uphold the liberty of the subject.

All things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them; there is scarcely one thing that is isolated from another. Everything is coordinated, everything works together in giving form to one universe. The world-order is a unity made up of multiplicity: God is one, pervading all things; all being is one, all law is one (namely, the common reason which all thinking persons possess) and all truth is one- if, as we believe, there can be but one path to perfection for beings that are alike in kind and reason.

If you don't have a consistent goal in life, you can't live it in a consistent way.

Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae, bugbears to frighten children.

In matter of writing or reading thou must needs be taught before thou can do either: much more in matter of life.

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.

No thefts of free will reported.

All those things at which thou wishest to arrive by a circuitous road, thou canst have now, if thou dost not refuse them to thyself.

I have often wondered how it should come to pass, that every man loving himself best, should more regard other men's opinions concerning himself than his own.

...that to expect a bad person not to harm others is like expecting fig trees not to secrete juice, babies not to cry, horses not to neigh-the inevitable not to happen.

If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it. For let thy efforts be.

There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen. Suppose that he was a good and a wise man, will there not be at least some one to say to himself, Let us at last breathe freely, being relieved from this schoolmaster? It is true that he was harsh to none of us, but I perceive that he tacitly condemns us.-This is what is said of a good man. But in our own case how many other things are there for which there are many who wish to get rid of us.

That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It's to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant-the act of a tyrant.

Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger.

How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them.

The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of the diseased eye. And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled. And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind. And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, Let my dear children live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things.

Learn to ask of all actions, "Why are they doing that?" Starting with your own.

Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,-there, if one must speak out, the real man.

In contemplating thyself never include the vessel which surrounds thee, and these instruments which are attached about it. For they are like an ax, differing only in this, that they grow to the body. For indeed there is no more use in these parts without the cause which moves and checks them than in the weaver's shuttle, and the writer's pen, and the driver's whip.

Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop doing such good.

There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.

Someone despises me. That's their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them.

The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not.

A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you're in the same room with him, you know it.

Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner, who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.

Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.

Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres.

Of the life of man the duration is but a point.

In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.

[Before making a decision] The first thing to do - don't get worked up. For everything happens according to the nature of all things, and in a short time you'll be nobody and nowhere even as the great emperors Hadrian and Augustus are now. The next thing to do - consider carefully the task at hand for what it is, while remembering that your purpose is to be a good human being. Get straight to doing what nature requires of you, and speak as you see most just and fitting - with kindness, modesty, and sincerity.

What if someone despises me? Let me see to it. But I will see to it that I won't be found doing or saying anything contemptible. What if someone hates me? Let me see to that. But I will see to it that I'm kind and good-natured to all, and prepared to show even the hater where they went wrong. Not in a critical way, or to show off my patience, but genuinely and usefully.

Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

A person who doesn't know what the universe is doesn't know who they are. A person who doesn't know their purpose in life doesn't know who they are or what the universe is. A person who doesn't know any of these things doesn't know why they are here. So what to make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?

Often injustice lies in what you aren't doing, not only in what you are doing.

Whenever you suffer pain, keep in mind that it's nothing to be ashamed of and that it can't degrade your guiding intelligence, nor keep it from acting rationally and for the common good. And in most cases you should be helped by the saying of Epicurus, that pain is never unbearable or unending, so you can remember these limits and not add to them in your imagination. Remember too that many common annoyances are pain in disguise, such as sleepiness, fever and loss of appetite. When they start to get you down, tell yourself you are giving in to pain.