110 timeless lines from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes — to steady your mind today. Tap a quote to copy or share it.
You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.
If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.
Confine yourself to the present.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.
Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together — but do so with all your heart.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.
It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
No man is free who is not master of himself.
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things beyond the power of our will.
First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
No great thing is created suddenly.
Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
Circumstances do not make the man; they only reveal him to himself.
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
While we wait for life, life passes.
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
He who is brave is free.
No man is good by chance. Virtue is something which must be learned.
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.
We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.
Every night before going to sleep, ask yourself: what weakness did I overcome today?
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
The universe is transformation: life is opinion.
It is in your power, whenever you choose, to retire into yourself.
Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.
Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
The cucumber is bitter? Throw it away. There are briars in the road? Turn aside from them. This is enough.
Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.
Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are.
Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away.
Take away your opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.'
The mind which is free from passions is a citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for refuge.
Think not so much of what you have not as of what you have.
How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks.
Death is a cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings which move the appetites.
That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear.
Every moment think steadily, as a Roman and a man, to do what you have in hand with perfect and simple dignity.
Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom yourself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change.
Do not waste the remainder of your life in thoughts about others, when you do not refer your thoughts to some object of common utility.
Keep yourself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice.
Short is the little which remains to you of life. Live as on a mountain.
How ridiculous and what a stranger he is who is surprised at anything which happens in life.
In the application of your principles you must be like the boxer, not like the gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he uses and is killed, but the other always has his hand.
Some things are in our control and others are not. Within our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion; outside our control are body, property, reputation, and command.
Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.
Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will; and add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens.
Let death and exile and every other thing which appears dreadful be daily before your eyes; but most of all death.
Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it.
Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot.
Never say of anything, 'I have lost it'; but, 'I have returned it.'
When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should make a wrong supposition about it.
Be for the most part silent, or speak merely what is necessary, and in few words.
Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself, abide by them as if they were laws.
The will of nature may be learned from those things in which we do not differ from one another.
It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; the instructed man blames himself; the man whose instruction is complete blames neither another nor himself.
He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance nor to force.
The beginning of philosophy is a consciousness of one's own weakness and inability about necessary things.
When a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man, that you may become an Olympic conqueror.
Where is the good? In the will. Where is the evil? In the will. Where is neither of them? In the things which are independent of the will.
Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time.
Hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of today's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow's.
The fool, with all his other faults, has this also: he is always getting ready to live.
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well.
I never bring back home the same character that I took abroad with me.
Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you.
They are slaves, people declare. Nay, rather they are men.
Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.
No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed.
A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is.
Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it.
When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you?
I am not born for any one corner of the universe; this whole world is my country.
He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery.
Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul.
Regard a man as loyal, and you will make him loyal.
Cease to hope, and you will cease to fear.
Philosophy is no trick to catch the public; it is not devised for show. It moulds and constructs the soul.
Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point.
No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it.
Fire tests gold, misfortune brave men.
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
We have two ears and only one mouth, that we may hear more and speak less.
Asked what a friend was, he replied, 'Another I.'
The end is to live in agreement with nature, which is the same as a virtuous life.
Conduct me, Jove, and you, O Destiny, wherever your decrees have fixed my station.
