Diane McCoy > Diane's Quotes

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“What we do now echoes in eternity.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Casting aside other things, hold to the precious few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only the present, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or is uncertain. Brief is man's life and small the nook of the earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Receive without conceit, release without struggle.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor's Handbook

“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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

“Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.”
― Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

“Confine yourself to the present.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess? ... It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When you arise in the moring, think of what a precious privelege it is to be alive-- to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations