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.
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All is ephemeral,--fame and the famous as well.
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To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.
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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
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How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
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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.
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As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.
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Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.
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A man does not sin by commission only, but often by ommission.
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A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all - that is myself.
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How ridiculous and unrealistic is the man who is astonished at anything that happens in life.
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As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land but the fame that comes after is oblivion.
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Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible; life in a palace is possible; therefore even in a palace a right life is possible.
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Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.
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A candour affected is a dagger concealed.
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How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.
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Life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion.
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No form of Nature is inferior to Art for the arts merely imitate natural forms.
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Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
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Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live death is nigh at hand while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.
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Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it.... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.
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By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.
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Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now high time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.
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My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.
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'Let thine occupations be few,' saith the sage, 'if thou wouldst lead a tranquil life.'
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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
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Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.
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The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.
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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
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Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
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