The quotable Emperor (and see Jennifer Michael Hecht's discussion of Marcus and the Stoics in her book Doubt: A History (I'll lend you a copy if you want to read/report on it in November).
“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
“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.”
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
“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.”
“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”
“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.”
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
“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.”
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