Variante: 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.
Origine: Meditations

“Observe the movements of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: Meditations

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: Meditations

“Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

VII, 59
Origine: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: Meditations

“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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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Meditations. iv. 17.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: Meditations

“To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: Meditations

“A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Hays translation
Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee. What then can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just? For instance, if a man should stand by a limpid pure spring, and curse it, the spring never ceases sending up potable water; and if he should cast clay into it or filth, it will speedily disperse them and wash them out, and will not be at all polluted. How then shalt thou possess a perpetual fountain? By forming thyself hourly to freedom conjoined with contentment, simplicity and modesty.
VIII, 51
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: Meditations (Hovory k sobě)

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Misattributed
Origine: Cited as being from The Meditations. This quote does not exist there; although there are several other statements about everything being an opinion, none of these are connected to a sentence about perspectives.

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Μηκέθ᾽ ὅλως περὶ τοῦ οἷόν τινα εἶναι τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα διαλέγεσθαι, ἀλλὰ εἶναι τοιοῦτον.
X, 16
Variante: Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.
Origine: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X

“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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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: VII, 8 (Penguin Classics edition of Meditations, translated by Maxwell Staniforth)

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Origine: Meditations

“The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

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Marcus Aurelius libro Meditations

Misattributed <br class="br">Origine: The first citation appears in a translation of Leo Tolstoy's Bethink Yourselves! http://www.nonresistance.org/docs_htm/Tolstoy/~Bethink_Yourselves/BY_chapter08.html by NONRESISTANCE.ORG. The claim made that it is from Marcus Aurelius. Nothing closely resembling it appears in Meditations, nor does it appear in a 1904 translation of Bethink Yourselves http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/bethink-yourselves/8/. The 1904 translation may be abridged, whereas the NONRESISTANCE.ORG translation claims to be unabridged.