Marcus Aurelius on Thinking Quotes

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

"The mind is the ruler of the soul."

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

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

"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."

"Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already."

"Our life is what our thoughts make it."

"Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them. IV, 36"

"The things you think about determine the quality of your mind."

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

"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together."

"Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul."

"If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it."

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

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

"Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought."

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

"Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig."

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

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

"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."

"Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good."

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

"How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks."

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

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

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

"Is any man afraid of change? Why? What can take place without change?"

"For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it is the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness [of deserting his post]. VII, 45"

"That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bee."

"Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life."

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

"A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions."