Stoic Quotes

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

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

“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”

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

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”

“If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.”

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not 'This is misfortune,' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'”

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself.”

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, and do so with all your heart.”

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

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”

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

“Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight.”

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly.”

“No man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.”

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

“Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.”

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.”

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”

“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.”

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”

“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”

“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don't have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”

“He who is brave is free.”

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”

“Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms — you'll be able to use them better when you're older.”

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

“There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

“Only the educated are free.”

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

“Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”

“Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”