Marcus Aurelius Quotes

I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.

You can be happy where you are.

Don't think you're going to be happy when you get something. You have to be happy on your way to happy.

There's only one reason why you're not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it's because you're thinking or focusing on what you don't have....But, right now you have everything you need to be in bliss.

It's so much easier to be happy. It's so much easier to choose to love the things that you have, instead of always yearning for what you're missing, or what it is that you're imagining you're missing. It is so much more peaceful.

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more.

You have everything you need for complete peace and total happiness right now.

Be satisfied with what you have.

Happiness is allowing yourself to be okay with what is, rather than wishing for, and bemoaning, what is not. Obviously, what is is what is supposed to be, or it would not be. The rest is just you, arguing with life.

That man lives happy and in command of himself, who from day to day can say I have lived. Whether clouds obscure, or the sun illumines the following day, that which is past is beyond recall.

The great Western disease is, ‘I'll be happy when... When I get the money. When I get a BMW. When I get this job. When I get the relationship,’ Well, the reality is, you never get to when. The only way to find happiness is to understand that happiness is not out there. It's in here. And happiness is not next week. It's now.

If I could change the way I live my life today, I wouldn't change a single thing.

Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it.

Our appointment with life is in the present moment. If we do not have peace and joy right now, when will we have peace and joy?

There is no failure in life. It all depends how you take things. If you are desiring too much - you want to reach too high, and you cannot - then there is frustration and failure. But if you are not desiring anything and you are perfectly happy wherever you are, life is moment-to-moment victory.

I might say: if the place I want to get to could only be reached by way of a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now. Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me.

Happiness comes from accepting the present situation, whether it is something you wish to savor as long as possible or change as quickly as you can. Neither is possible without acceptance as the starting point, because without acceptance you are living on the periphery of your life. There at the edges, you can't fully enjoy the good stuff or do anything about the rest.

You will never find happiness until you stop looking for it.

I don't need a "reason" to be happy. I don't have to consult the future to know how happy I feel now.

I hope that I'm always satisfied and content like I am right at this very moment.

Focus on where you are instead of where you wish you were. The joy will follow.

Are you always trying to get somewhere other than where you are so that you can finally be happy? The truth is that all unhappiness is caused by denial of the present.

In this moment that blooms and fades as it passes, he is enough, and all is well in the world.

If you separate from . . . everything you have done in the past, everything that disturbs you about the future . . . and apply yourself to living the life that you are living-that is to say, the present-you can live all the time that remains to you until your death in calm, benevolence, and serenity.

If you can be content right now, then you'll always be content, because it's always right now.