Remus > Remus's Quotes

“In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us—like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”
― Seneca

“Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool ”
― Seneca, Moral Essays, Volume I: De Providentia. De Constantia. De Ira. De Clementia

“I choose to live by choice, not by chance; to make changes, not excuses; to be motivated, not manipulated; to be useful, not used; to excel, not to compete. I choose self-esteem, not self-pity. I choose to listen to my inner voice, not the random opinion of others. I choose to be me.”
― Miranda Marrott

“Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

“To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.”
― Plato

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
― Socrates

“On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.”
― Epictetus, The Discourses

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other”
― Epictetus

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.”
― Lao Tzu

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.”
― Epictetus (From Manual 51)

“Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they're fools, and fools who think they are wise.”
― Socrates

“So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature, what I do by my own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If: this evil is not of my doing, nor the result of it, and the community is not endangered, why should it bother me? Where’s the danger for the community?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“What injures the hive injures the bee.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
― Epictetus

“Then the only proper response for me to make is this: ‘You are much mistaken, my friend, if you think that any man worth his salt cares about the risk of death and doesn’t concentrate on this alone: whether what he’s doing is right or wrong, and his behavior a good man’s or a bad one’s.’ ”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
― Lao Tzu

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

“Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent. ”
― Epictetus

“To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. This is how we learn: by looking at each thing, both the parts and the whole. Keeping in mind that none of them can dictate how we perceive it. They don’t impose themselves on us. They hover before us, unmoving. It is we who generate the judgments—inscribing them on ourselves. And we don’t have to. We could leave the page blank—and if a mark slips through, erase it instantly.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“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. Don’t let anything deter you: other people’s misbehavior, your own misperceptions, What People Will Say, or the feelings of the body that covers you (let the affected part take care of those). And if, when it’s time to depart, you shunt everything aside except your mind and the divinity within … if it isn’t ceasing to live that you’re afraid of but never beginning to live properly … then you’ll be worthy of the world that made you. No longer an alien in your own land. No longer shocked by everyday events—as if they were unheard-of aberrations. No longer at the mercy of this, or that.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them.
But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us—like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions
or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the
obstacle to our acting.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations