Marcus Aurelius Quotes

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.

When you label so much of what happens to you as 'bad,' it reinforces the feeling that you are a powerless pawn at the mercy of outside forces over which you have no control. And - this is key - labeling something a bad thing almost guarantees that you'll experience it as such.

No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys.

The problem is not what other people think, do or say; it is your reaction.

It's your choice, what you do with the moment. If you're stuck in a traffic jam, you can get angry and honk your horn, or listen to Mozart. But when you have a very specific expectation of how things should be, then, of course, you end up hurting yourself.

What Richard is talking about is instead admitting to the existence of negative thoughts, understanding where they came from and why they arrived, and then - with great forgiveness and fortitude - dismissing them.

When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it. It is not the things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor are they what they seem to be. They are what they are.

We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.

The pressure... It's not real unless you let it be real.

I only allow that which is good into my life. No one can depress you. No one can make you anxious. No one can hurt your feelings. No one can make you anything.....other than what you allow!

It's kind of hard get outside of your own frame of reference. To one degree or another, we all go through our breakdowns and we can recognize our lives as a path to awakening or not. We can take our breakdowns as a way to sensitize us or as an excuse to blind and dull ourselves.

It's not what people do to us that hurts us. In the most fundamental sense, it is our chosen response to what they do to us that hurts us.

What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.

With meditation, you become a sensitized superhero, completely in control, with endless possibilities at your fingertips.

When we speak of choice, what we mean is the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. In order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.

When I believed my thoughts I suffered.

Live with it. You live with pleasure, don't you? Why don't you live with suffering completely? Can you live with it in the sense of not escaping from it? What takes place? Watch. The mind is very clear, sharp. It is faced with the fact. The very suffering transformed into passion is enormous. From that arises a mind that can never be hurt. Full stop. That is the secret.

It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

If you didn't have anxiety, then you wouldn't have passion for anything. The reason we have anxiety is because you care and you're thoughtful.

The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.

You cannot control all of what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward all of what happens to you...You can choose to be happy and grateful rather than disappointed and bitter, by focusing on how it could have turned out worse but didn't, rather than how it could have turned out better but didn't.

Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.

Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don't interrupt our patterns slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice?

To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.