Stoic Quotes by Epictetus:

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

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

“People are not distiurbed by things, but by the view they take of them.”

“The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

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

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

“Only the educated are free.”

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

“It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.”

“It takes more than just a good looking body. You’ve got to have the heart and soul to go with it.”

“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.”

“It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the follish to be a slave to them.”

Stoic Quotes by Marcus Aurelius: 

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

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

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

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

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

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

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

“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”

“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.”

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

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

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

“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.”

“When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.”

Stoic Quotes by Seneca:

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

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

“All cruelty springs from weakness.”

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”

“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via” – “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”

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

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”

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

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

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

“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject… And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them… Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.”

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

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. … The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”

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

Stoic Quotes by Viktor Frankl:

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”