Meditations Quotes

“If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you should be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which you speak, you will live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Inquire of yourself as soon as you wake from sleep, whether it will make any difference to you, if another does what is just and right. It will make no difference.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Consider yourself to be dead, and to have completed your life up to the present time; and now live according to nature the remainder which is allowed you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“And you will give yourself relief, if you live your every act in life as if it were the last,”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“to be satisfied on all occasions, and cheerful;”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“a good fortune is good disposition of the soul, good emotions and good actions.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Remember how long you have been putting off things, and how often you have received an opportunity from the gods, and yet not use it. You must now at last perceive that you are part of the universe, and that the universe's existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do not use for clearing away the clouds from your mind, it will go and you will go, and it will never return.   Every”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“From my governor”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing he doesn’t have.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Remember how long you have been putting off things, and how often you have received an opportunity from the gods, and yet not used it. You must now at last perceive that you are part of the universe, and that the universe's existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do not use for clearing away the clouds from your mind, it will go and you will go, and it will never return.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the meddling, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Do not waste the remainder of your life in thoughts about others, when you do not require these thoughts.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Since it is possible that you may depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Do wrong to yourself, do wrong to yourself, your soul; but you will no longer have the opportunity of honoring yourself.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“From him I also learned the endurance of labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands. Not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to listen to slander.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Do not waste the remainder of your life in thoughts about others, when you do not require these thoughts. For you lose the opportunity of doing something else when you have such thoughts as these, what is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own ruling power.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Remember how long you have been putting off things, and how often you have received an opportunity from the gods, and yet not use it. You must now at last perceive that you are part of the universe, and that the universe's existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do not use for clearing away the clouds from your mind, it will go and you will go, and it will never return.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“a limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do not use for clearing away the clouds from your mind, it will go and you will go, and it will never return.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“no longer either be dissatisfied with the present, or shrink from the future.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“What is it that I am? A little flesh and breath,”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“he was a man who looked to what should be done, not to the reputation which was to be gained by his acts.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“after a headache he became immediately fresh and vigorous to his usual occupations.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“tolerate ignorant people who form opinions without consideration.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason;”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“To read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book;”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“With respect to those who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be free of anger as soon as they have shown a readiness to reconcile.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“Don't say I am unhappy because this has happened to me. But I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. For such a thing as this might have happened to any man; but not every man would have continued free from pain on such an occasion.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“You are an old man; no longer let yourself be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to social movements, no longer either be dissatisfied with the present, or shrink from the future.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

“There is nowhere quieter with more freedom from trouble than when a man retires into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.”
― James Harris, Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader