What counts can’t always be counted; what can be counted doesn’t always count.

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 crave for them if they were not yours.

When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.

People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills… There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind… So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.

When you wish to delight yourself, think of the virtues of those who live with you; for instance, the activity of one, the modesty of another, the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth.

To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. For all these [blessings in my life] require the help of the gods and fortune.

All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.

Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and how nothing need arouse one’s irritation so long as one doesn’t make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind – things that exist only there – and clear out space for yourself: by comprehending the scale of the world, by contemplating infinite time, by thinking of the speed with which things change – each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equality unbounded time that follows.

Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived – not in the least like the rich. (What Marcus learned from his mother)

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

If you seek tranquility, do less. Or do what’s essential – what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’

Think not so much of what you lack as of what you have: but of the things that you have, select the best, and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.

Remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present.

Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions.

Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people – unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what the’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.

You can pass your life in an equable flow of happiness if you can follow the right way and think and act in the right way.

Failure to observe what is in the mind of another has seldom made a man unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.

Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about you to see if anyone will observe it; nor yet expect Plato’s Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not “This is misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune”.

Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.

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

How soon will time cover all things, and how many it has covered already.

A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.

Brief is man’s life and small the nook of the earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body, this interval is laboriously passed.

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone – those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the ‘what’ is in constant flux, the ‘why’ has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us – a chasm whose depths we cannot see.

How short is the time from birth to dissolution, and the illimitable time before birth as well as the equally boundless time after dissolution.

The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as if it were the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.

Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

Life is not fair; get used to it.

Think of all the years passed by in which you said to yourself “I’ll do it tomorrow,” and how the gods have again and again granted you periods of grace of which you have not availed yourself. It is time to realize that you are a member of the Universe, that you are born of Nature itself, and to know that a limit has been set to your time. Use every moment wisely, to perceive your inner refulgence, or ’twill be gone and nevermore within your reach.

Your life is short. You must turn to profit the present by the aid of reason and justice.

Not to waste time on nonsense.

Receive without conceit, release without struggle

Be content to seem what you really are.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. 

Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it. 

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

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

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

Life is a long lesson in humility.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

If it’s not right, don’t do it. If it’s not true, don’t say it.