Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.
Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose self-respect.
- Topic: Character, Reputation, Respect, Self, Self-esteem
- Location: Olympic National Park
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Marcus Aurelius
What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.
Be grateful that on this raging sea you have a mind to guide you.
What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.
The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than others their opinions more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
More Quotes from Olympic National Park
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One can acquire everything in solitude—except character.
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife.
If you develop a pure and sincere motivation, in you are motivated by a wish to help on the basis of kindness, compassion, and respect, then you can carry on any kind of work, in any field, and function more effectively.
Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.
Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.
You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge are not infused into us from without.
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
Esteem to your higher self.
If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.