Quotes

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, ‘He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would have not mentioned these alone.'”

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?”

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

“Curb your desire—don’t set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need.”

“Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.”

“Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.”

“That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should.”

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”

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

“[It is] like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage [wine] is rotted grapes... perceptions like that... latching onto things and piercing through them, to see what they really are... to strip away the legend that encrusts them.”

“Things stand outside of us, themselves by themselves, neither knowing anything of themselves nor expressing any judgment.”

“In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.”

“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.”

“If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone.”

“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.”

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

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”

“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”

“If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

“This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.”

“How does it help... to make troubles heavier by bemoaning them?”

“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”

“He who fears death will never do anything worth of a man who is alive.”

“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future”

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”