Maria

“When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”
― Seneca

“The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all. And before long you’ll be no one, nowhere—like Hadrian, like Augustus. The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal—the way you fear and long for them.… Before long, darkness. And whoever buries you mourned in their turn.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations