Marcus Aurelius

“Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions.”

“When you have acted as a man should, you have done your part. Let the rest take care of itself.”

“Settle on the type of person you want to be and stick to it, whether alone or in company.”

“Live with the gods. And to live with the gods is to show them that one's soul accepts what is allotted to it.”

“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.”

“All things flow naturally from the supreme Whole and to it return.”

“Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.”

“How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome and ungrateful.”

“Begin each day with this thought: I shall meet today with interfering, ungrateful, insolent, treacherous, malicious, unsocial people.”

“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.”

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

“Don't waste any more time arguing what a good man is. Be one.”

“Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.”

“When forced, as it seems, by circumstances into utter confusion, retire into thyself.”

“Time is a sort of river of passing events; the current is strong; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place.”

“Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human — however imperfectly — and fully embrace the pursuit you've embarked on.”

“How ridiculous and what a stranger he is who is surprised at anything that happens in life.”

“Compassion is not weakness, and mercy is not submission.”