Marcus Aurelius on Mindfulness Quotes

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

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

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

"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."

"Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it."

"Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors. Anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you means a loss of opportunity."

"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."

"Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside."

"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."

"Wipe out the imagination. Stop the pulling of the strings. Confine thyself to the present."

"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."

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."

"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."

"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."

"Remember that your ruling reason becomes unconquerable when it rallies and relies on itself."

"Stop wandering about! You aren't likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient history, or the anthologies you've collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life's purpose."

"Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew."

"Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away."

"Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life."

"Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art."

"Do not let the panorama of your life oppress you, do not dwell on all the various troubles which may have occurred in the past or may occur in the future. Just ask yourself in every instance of the present: 'What is there in this work which I cannot endure or support?'"

"Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging."

"To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference."

"Always define whatever it is we perceive—to trace its outline—so we can see what it really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified."

"You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself."

"Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly."

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

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

"Confine yourself to 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."