Marcus Aurelius

"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."

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

"Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion."

"To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of."

"From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason."

"Whatsoever I am, is either flesh, or life, or that which we commonly call the mistress and overruling part of man; reason."

"Remember how long thou hast already put off these things, and how often a certain day and hour as it were, having been set unto thee by the gods, thou hast neglected it."

"Go about every action as thy last action, free from all vanity, all passionate and wilful aberration from reason, and from all hypocrisy, and self-love."

"Consider how quickly all things are dissolved and resolved: the bodies and substances themselves, into the matter and substance of the world: and their memories into the general age and time of the world."

"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."

"At what time soever thou wilt, it is in thy power to retire into thyself, and to be at rest, and free from all businesses."

"The whole earth is but as one point; and of it, this inhabited part of it, is but a very little part."

"This world is mere change, and this life, opinion."

"Let opinion be taken away, and no man will think himself wronged."

"Not as though thou hadst thousands of years to live. Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good."

"Whatsoever is expedient unto thee, O World, is expedient unto me."

"Look within; within is the fountain of all good. Such a fountain, where springing waters can never fail, so thou dig still deeper and deeper."

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

"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."

"Our life is what our thoughts make it."

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

"The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts."