Marcus Aurelius

“Observe the movements of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground.”

“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”

“Confine yourself to the present.”

“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance.”

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”

“All things fade and quickly turn to myth.”

“All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.”

“Anger cannot be dishonest.”

“A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.”

“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.”

“Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.”

“The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.”

“The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow? Only one thing, philosophy. And philosophy doth consist in this, for a man to preserve that spirit which is within him, from all manner of contumelies and injuries, and above all pains or pleasures; never to do anything either rashly, or feignedly, or hypocritically: only to depend from himself, and his own proper actions: all things that happen unto him to embrace contentendly, as coming from Him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to expect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of those elements, of which every creature is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution, and alteration, which is so common unto all, why should it be feared by any? Is not this according to nature? But nothing that is according to nature can be evil.”

“How soon will time cover all things.”

“It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.”

“Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.”

“No lo hagas, si no conviene; no lo digas si no es verdad.”

“Do unsavory armpits and bad breath make you angry?”

“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 men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.”

“The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.”

“strength and honor”

“In an expression of true gratitude, sadness is conspicuous only by its absence”

“If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.”

“Today I escaped all circumstance, or rather I cast out all circumstance, for it was not outside me, but within my judgements.”

“Menjalani kehidupan setiap harinya seolah - olah hari itu adalah hari terakhir, tidak pernah mengalami kebingungan, tidak pernah bersikap apatis, tidak pernah latah untuk ikut - ikutan, itu semua adalah karakter sempurna”

“It is within our power not to make a judgement about something, and so not disturb our minds; for nothing in itself possesses the power to form our judgements.”

“Everything is banal in experience, fleeting in duration, sordid in content; in all respects the same today as generations now dead and buried have found it to be.”

“Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.”

“No man is happy who does not think himself so.”

“Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature,that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so securestranquility.”

“From my Great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.”

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”

“striid andWthdraw into yourself. Our master-reason asks no more than to act justly, and thereby to achieve calm.”

“Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space - and most of it uninhabited.”

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

“Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered."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 things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.”

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

“Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.”

“Men exist for the sake of one another.”

“That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not".”

“What we do now echoes in eternity.”

“Failure to read what is happening in another's soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.”

“No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess? ... It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.”

“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life”

“Everything - a horse, a vine - is created for some duty... For what task, then, were you yourself created?”

“Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also. Marcus Aurelius”

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

“Life is opinion.”

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”