Meditations

"You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously."

"The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires."

"Ponder for a moment: Is any of your burdens truly intolerable?"

"How much less in making one a good and worthy person? Or, what is really required? To hold to principles, make consistent decisions, discipline the soul."

"Fear is only an opinion; pain is only an opinion. In a moment it is gone."

"Ask not that events happen as you will, but let your will be that events happen as they do, and you shall have peace."

"The best measure of a person is how they treat someone who can do them absolutely no good."

"How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man."

"You have the power to strip away many useless things that clutter your mind, and your life will expand vastly if you do so."

"If you work hard and act honorably, your success is assured; if you do so dishonestly, your failure is assured."

"Everything is temporary."

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

"Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see."

"Concentrate every minute like a Roman on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness."

"Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events."

"Take away your opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.'"

"Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it is endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining."

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

"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears."

"The primary principle of philosophy is that understanding one's problems precedes their solution."

"Remember that all we have is the present moment, the fleeting now; all the rest of our life is either past or is uncertain."

"Rightly no one can rob you of your free will."

"A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it."

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

"If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures."

"Time is a river of passing events."

"Malice can never drive out malice. Only love can do that."

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

"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?"

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