Sages · Stoics · Emperor · Stoic · 121–180
MarcusAurelius
“You have power over your mind, not over external events. Understand this — and you will find strength.”
You have caught me in the evening, over my notes. Sit — let us speak of what is in your power.
To himself
Every morning I say to myself: today I shall meet the ungrateful, the insolent, the deceitful. And every evening I ask myself not what they did to me, but what I did with what they did.
I ruled Rome in years of war and plague and wrote not for readers — for myself. Let us speak the same way: briefly, without consolation, of what depends on you.