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

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

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

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.

The best revenge is not to be like that.

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

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

Confine yourself to the present.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for any man to accomplish.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

Choose not to be harmed—and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed—and you haven't been.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.

Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense.

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall meet with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot distinguish good from evil.

Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.

The universal order and the personal order are nothing different.

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest is either a life that is past, or is in an uncertain future.

Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept away.

What brings no benefit to the hive brings no benefit to the bee.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.

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

Execute every act of your life as though it were your last, free from all vanity and despair.

Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit.

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my color.

Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have given you dates of grace, and you have not used them.

Straight, not straightened.

Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.

How ridiculous and what a stranger he is who is surprised by anything which happens in life.

A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briers in the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, 'And why were such things made in the world?'

Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul.

Receive without pride, let go without attachment.

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.

The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

Do not let future things disturb you, for you will come to them, if you shall at all, having the same reason which now you use on present things.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

Give yourself a gift: the present moment.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you will see the future, too.

Do what is necessary, and whatever the reason of a social animal requires, and in the manner in which it requires.

Everything is woven together and the common bond is sacred.

Treat what you have as if it were not yours, and you will not weep when it is taken.

Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed.

Do not be ashamed of being helped. It is your duty to achieve your work, like a soldier on the battlements.

Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.

He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if you have no sensation, neither will you have any harm.

The mind that is free from passion is a citadel; for man has no stronger place than this to which he can flee.

Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, or to hate any man.

Is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change?

To be like the rock which the waves keep crashing over. It stands, unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.

Dig within. Within is the well of good, and it will ever bubble forth, if you will ever dig.

A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your soul.

Look down from above upon the countless swarms of men who march together and strive, and observe how transient and small it all is.

The soul of man does violence to itself when it becomes an abscess and a tumor on the universe.

Pass through this life as an honest traveler, grateful for each inn along the way.

No man can rob you of your will.

Do not despise death, but be well pleased with it, since it is one of the things which nature wills.

Waste no more time talking about what a good human being should be. Embody it.

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.

He who has a calm nature and is undisturbed by events carries a sanctuary within his breast.

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 there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.

Everything comes from the cosmos, exists in the cosmos, and returns to the cosmos.

Nature has given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.

To be ungrateful is to forget that you too are made of the same clay.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

Do not let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner harmony.

You have survived so much; why surrender now?

Every morning, remind yourself of the fellowship of all rational beings, and remember that you were born to cooperate with them.

Be content to seem what you really are.

A branch cut off from the adjacent branch must of necessity be cut off from the whole tree also.

Neither blame nor praise moves the sun from its course.

Look at the stars and feel their unhurried eternity.

Remember how brief is the span of a mortal life, and how great the abyss of the infinite past and future.

Do what is right. It matters not if you are burning or freezing, sleepy or well-slept, reviled or praised, dying or busy with other duties.

Treat every person you encounter as a relative, bound to you by universal kinship.

Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will set, and you with it.

Let no one hear you complain, not even yourself.

Whatever is in any way beautiful has its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it.

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly hurt.

Stand like an anvil when it is beaten upon. A great champion must be struck and yet conquer.

To live for virtue is to live in freedom.

Keep this thought close at hand: What is evil? It is what you have seen many times before. Nothing in this world is new; all is familiar and ephemeral.

The soul becomes like that which it contemplates.

Every morning when you wake up, thank the heavens for the gift of another day of conscious thought.

Hold on to the present, for it is the only thing any of us can ever lose.

Let reason be your guide, and peace will be your companion.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life.