Consider, for example, and you will find that almost all the transactions in the time of Vespasian differed little from those of the present day. You there find marrying and giving in marriage, educating children, sickness, death, war, joyous holidays, traffic, agriculture, flatterers, insolent pride, suspicions, laying of plots, longing for the death of others, newsmongers, lovers, misers, men canvassing far the consulship and for the kingdom; yet all these passed away, and are nowhere.
Marcus AureliusThe cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That's all you need to know.
Marcus AureliusExternal things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.
Marcus AureliusEverything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What's surprising about that? Even the sun will tell you, "I have a purpose," and the other goods as well.
Marcus AureliusOur inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces - to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What's thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it - and makes it burn still higher.
Marcus Aurelius