The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Integrity and manliness. (What Marcus learned from his father)

To accept without arrogance, to let it go with indifference.

Each day provides its own gifts.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

Nothing should be done without a purpose.

Even the smallest thing should be done with reference to an end.

Stick to what’s in front of you – idea, action, utterance.

What is your art? To be good.

Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.

If you judge, investigate.

Give yourself a gift: the present moment.

The true man is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material. But this is going to take some sweat to accomplish.

There were two vices much blacker and more serious than the rest: lack of persistence and lack of self-control… persist and resist.

The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.

Look within. Within is the foundation of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.

To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony. 

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.

Consider if you have behaved to all in such a way that this way be said of you: Never has he wronged a man in deed or word.

What is divine deserves our affection because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us.

People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat.

The spiritual meaning of love is measured by what it can do. Love is meant to heal. Love is meant to renew. Love is meant to bring us closer to God.

[Treat] unenlightened souls with sympathy and indulgence, remembering that they are ignorant or mistaken about what’s most important. Never be harsh, remember Plato’s dictum: ‘Every soul is deprived of the truth against its will.’

Shall any man hate me? That will be his affair. But I will be mild and benevolent toward every man, and ready to show even him his mistake, not reproachfully, nor yet as making a display of my endurance, but nobly and honestly.

Accustom yourself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, try to inhabit the speaker’s mind.

In your conversation, don’t dwell at excessive length on your own deeds or adventures. Just because you enjoy recounting your exploits doesn’t mean that others derive the same pleasure from hearing about them.

One thing here is worth a great deal: to pass your life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition even to liars and unjust men.

Refer your action to no other end than the common good.

Do not be whirled about, but in every movement have respect to justice, and on the occasion of every impression maintain the faculty of comprehension or understanding.

If a man is mistaken, instruct him kindly and show him his error. But if you are not able, blame yourself, or not even yourself.

When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic – what defines a human being — is to work with others. Even animals know how to sleep. And it’s the characteristic activity that’s the more natural one – more innate and more satisfying.

Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort? 

From my brother Severus to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice. 

To show intuitive sympathy for friends, tolerance to amateurs and sloppy thinkers.

From Sextus to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who form opinions without consideration. 

To have learned how to accept favors from friends without losing your self-respect or appearing ungrateful.

His respect for people who practiced philosophy – at least, those who were sincere about it. But without denigrating the others – or listening to them.

Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains.

Only attend to yourself, and resolve to be a good man in every act that you do.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

What is your art? To be good. And how is this accomplished well except by general principles, some about the nature of the universe, and others about the proper constitution of man?

People exist for one another. You can instruct or endure them.

As an antidote to battle unkindness we were given kindness.

What is your vocation? To be a good person.

Whatever any one does or says, I must be good, just as if the emerald (or the gold or the purple) were always saying “Whatever any one does or says, I must be emerald and keep my color.”

First, do nothing inconsiderately or without a purpose. Second, make your acts refer to nothing else but a social end.

When a guide meets up with someone who is lost, ordinarily his reaction is to direct him on the right path, not mock or malign him, then turn on his heel and walk away. As for you, lead someone to the truth and you will find that he can follow. But as long as you don’t point it out to him, don’t make fun of him; be aware of what you need to work on instead.

That no one could ever have felt patronized by him – or in a position to patronize him. A sense of humour. (What Marcus learned from Maximus)

No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.