51
At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.
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Attribution
52
At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.
53
But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.
54
A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it.
55
The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means?
56
There are a thousand other instances in which application has conquered all obstacles, and proved that nothing which the mind has set itself to endure is difficult.
57
In rest you go beyond these limits, and beyond what is enough; but in action you do not fill the measure, and remain well within your powers.
58
Make trial how the life of a good man succeeds with you, the life of one who is content with the lot appointed him by Providence
59
each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be
Marcus Aureliusdisputed·The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (trans. George W. Chrystal)·1902
Attribution contested
This is the passage behind the slogan the obstacle is the way, which Marcus never wrote. That phrase is the title of a 2014 book, and the sentence usually quoted with it -- the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way -- is Gregory Hays's 2002 translation, still in copyright. The thought is genuinely his; the memorable English is not.
60
Find your sole delight and recreation in proceeding from one unselfish action to another, with God ever in mind.
61
Is pleasure, then, the object of your being, and not action, and the exercise of your powers?
62
the mind can convert and change everything that impedes its activity into matter for its action; hindrance in its work becomes its real help, and every obstruction makes for its progress
63
Acquire a method of perceiving how all things change into one another.
64
No man can hinder the proper work of the mind.
65
Every corps is a chain of despots, who, submitting and tyrannizing without exercising their reason, become dead weights of vice and folly on the community.
66
I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life.
67
You are going to make mistakes — own them, make amends, and move on. Guilt and regret kills many a man before their time. Turn the page, get off the ride.
68
Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and at one's ease: but men do not always take the right way.
69
The man who labors without a definite purpose that is backed up by a definite plan for its attainment, resembles the ship that has lost its rudder.
70
This habit of putting off until tomorrow that which you should have done last week or last year or a score of years ago is gnawing at the very vitals of your being, and you can accomplish nothing until you throw it off.
71
The ultimate effect of parasitism is always a paralysis of the will and an inability to compel oneself into any course of action for the moment unpleasurable and exhaustive.
72
No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.
73
Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
74
Many of us imprison ourselves in the narrow limited poverty thought, and then, like caged eagles trying in vain to get free, we beat out our wings against the bars we have ourselves put up.
75
All our limitations are in our own minds, the supply is there waiting in vast abundance.