Marcus Aurelius on Happiness Quotes

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."

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

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking."

"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul."

"Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them."

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

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears."

"Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too."

"When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love..."

"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."

"How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy."

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

"Confine yourself to the present."

"He who is content with his lot and the portion assigned to him is a happy man."

"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."

"Dig within. Within is the well of good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig."

"The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury."

"Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so."

"Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been."

"Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight."

"Receive without conceit, release without struggle."

"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."

"Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would have craved for them if they were not yours."

"Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature."

"Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time."

"Life is short. That's all there is to say. Get what you can from the present – thoughtfully, justly."

"Be content to seem what you really are."

"Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop."

"It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire."

"Do every act of your life as if it were your last."

"Look within. Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape thee."