Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.
Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.
For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.
A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.
Receive without conceit, release without struggle.
Life is neither good nor evil, but only a place for good and evil.
The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.
No more roundabout discussions of what makes a good man. Be one!
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.
We must make haste, then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.
People try to get away from it all – to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful – more free of interruptions – than your own soul.
Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions.
From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have not leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relations to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations.
There’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility.
Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them.
Failing to understand the workings of one’s own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.
To expect an impossibility is madness.
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.