Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.
Marcus AureliusThere is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay, and this is common to the entire universe.
Marcus AureliusThe inner master, when confronted with an obstacle, uses it as fuel, like a fire which consumes things that are thrown into it. A small lamp would be snuffed out, but a big fire will engulf what is thrown at it and burn hotter; it consumes the obstacle and uses it to reach a higher level.
Marcus AureliusA spider is proud when it has caught a fly; one man when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another when he has taken wild boars, and another when he has taken bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians. Are not these robbers, if you examine their opinions?
Marcus AureliusPeople who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time-even when hard at work.
Marcus AureliusWhy do you hunger for length of days? The point of life is to follow reason and the divine spirit and to accept whatever nature sends you. To live in this way is not to fear death, but to hold it in contempt. Death is only a thing of terror for those unable to live in the present. Pass on your way, then, with a smiling face, under the smile of him who bids you go
Marcus Aurelius