Meditations Quotes.

1. "No thefts of free will reported.[—Epictetus.]"
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

2. "Everything you’re trying to reach—by taking the long way round—you could have right now, this moment. If you’d only stop thwarting your own attempts. If you’d only let go of the past, entrust the future to Providence, and guide the present toward reverence and justice. Reverence: so you’ll accept what you’re allotted. Nature intended it for you, and you for it. Justice: so that you’ll speak the truth, frankly and without evasions, and act as you should—and as other people deserve."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

3. "Your three components: body, breath, mind. Two are yours in trust; to the third alone you have clear title. If you can cut yourself—your mind—free of what other people do and say, of what you’ve said or done, of the things that you’re afraid will happen, the impositions of the body that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance—doing what’s right, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth— If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness, and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) . . . then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

4. "Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

5. "Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you. —Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine. Let the part of you that makes that judgment keep quiet even if the body it’s attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinking with pus, or consumed by cancer. Or to put it another way: It needs to realize that what happens to everyone—bad and good alike—is neither good nor bad. That what happens in every life—lived naturally or not—is neither natural nor unnatural."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

6. "It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. If a god appeared to us—or a wise human being, even—and prohibited us from concealing our thoughts or imagining anything without immediately shouting it out, we wouldn’t make it through a single day. That’s how much we value other people’s opinions—instead of our own."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

7. "To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of: whom"
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

8. "The student as boxer, not fencer. The fencer’s weapon is picked up and put down again. The boxer’s is part of him. All he has to do is clench his fist."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

9. "When someone seems to have injured you: But how can I be sure? And in any case, keep in mind: • that he’s already been tried and convicted—by himself. (Like scratching your own eyes out.) • that to expect a bad person not to harm others is like expecting fig trees not to secrete juice, babies not to cry, horses not to neigh—the inevitable not to happen. What else could they do—with that sort of character? If you’re still angry, then get to work on that."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

10. "You should always look on human life as short and cheap. Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations