Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

"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."

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world' The student of nature will only laugh at you; just as a carpenter or a shoemaker would laugh, if you found fault with the shavings and scraps from their work which you saw in the shop. Yet they, at least, have somewhere to throw their litter; whereas Nature has no such out-place. That is the miracle of her workmanship: that in spite of this self-limitation, she nevertheless transmutes into herself everything that seems worn-out or old or useless, and re-fashions it into new creations, so as never to need either fresh supplies from without, or a place to discard her refuse. Her own space, her own materials and her own skill are sufficient for her."

"Every living organism is fulfilled when it follows the right path for its own nature."

"In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present - I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?"

"Your mind will take on the character of your most frequent thoughts: souls are dyed by thoughts."

"Things of themselves cannot touch the soul at all. They have no entry to the soul, and cannot turn or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself, making all externals presented to it cohere with the judgements it thinks worthy of itself."

"You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say."

"That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty."

"Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them."

"Give up your thirst for books, so that you do not die a grouch."

"The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time."

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

"We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first."

"That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not"."

"Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence."

"No man is happy who does not think himself so."

"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."

"As for thy thirst after books, away with it with all speed."

"The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts."

"If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them."