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Shawshank



Stoicism in The Shawshank Redemption Meditations I.

Stoicism in Gladiator Meditations II.


Marcus Aurelius --- Epictetus --- Seneca --- Chrysippus




The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
~ Marcus Aurelius

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The oject of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
~ Marcus Aurelius

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
~ Marcus Aurelius

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

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
~ Marcus Aurelius

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
~ Marcus Aurelius

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.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The soul becomes byed with the color of its thoughts.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Our life is what our thougts make it.
~ Marcus Aurelius

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
~ Marcus Aurelius

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.
~ Marcus Aurelius

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.
~ Marcus Aurelius

A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and stong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, - This is a misforture - but - To bear this worthily is good fortune.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.
~ Marcus Aurelius

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.
~ Marcus Aurelius

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Each day provides its own gifts.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Look within. Within is the foutain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Poverty is the mother of crime.
~ Marcus Aurelius

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Anger cannot be dishonest.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, adn from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
~ Marcus Aurelius

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
~ Marcus Aurelius

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The are of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.
~ Marcus Aurelius

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
~ Marcus Aurelius

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
~ Marcus Aurelius

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Confine yourself to the present.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The universe is transformation: life is opinion.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Be content to seem what you really are.
~ Marcus Aurelius

To understand the true quailty of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.
~ Marcus Aurelius

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.
~ Marcus Aurelius

We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Men exist for the sake of one another.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Where a man can live, he can also live well.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Everything that exists is in a manner that seed of that which will be.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Forward, as occasions offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it. Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.
~ Marcus Aurelius

There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
~ Marcus Aurelius

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest ever act of thy life as if were the last.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.
~ Marcus Aurelius

What springs from eath dissolves to earth agian, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.
~ Marcus Aurelius

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.
~ Marcus Aurelius