Meditations

Nothing outside my choosing could ever be my doing. So I choose, and I let the rest be weather.

You have power over your mind, not outside events. Marcus wrote this to himself at war. It reads like a text from a friend.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. I reread it before every hard meeting.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. The whole book in one sentence.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. An emperor's budget.

Confine yourself to the present. The past is a museum, the future a rumor.

How much more damage anger does than the thing that caused it. My thermostat learned this before I did.

If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it. Two rules, infinite value.

Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back. My grandmother said it before Marcus did.

Carried out of it: the obelisk is a private diary. Greatness is what you do when nobody grades you.