Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.
We always have a choice about the contents and character of our inner lives.
Keep your attention focused entirely on what is truly your own concern, and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of yours.
You may well have to forego wealth and power if you want to assure the attainment of happiness and freedom.
Desire and aversion, though powerful, are but habits. And we can train ourselves to have better habits.
Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get.
When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it.
It is not so much what are are doing as how you are doing it.
We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.
Small-minded people habitually reproach others for their own misfortunes. Average people reproach themselves. Those are are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame something or someone is foolishness, that there is nothing to be gained in blaming, whether it be others or oneself.
Things simply are what they are.
Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source.
Create your own merit.
Getting distracted by trifles is the easiest thing in the world.
Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.
As time goes by and you build on the habit of matching the appropriate inner resource to each incident, you will not tend to get carried away by life's appearances.
The important thing is to take great care with what you have while the world lest you have it, just as a traveler takes care of a room at an inn.
Begin at once a program of self-mastery. Say to yourself, "Coping calmly with this inconvenience is the price I pay for my inner serenity, for freedom from perturbation; you don't get something for nothing."
Be on your guard against false sense of self-importance.
By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free.
Think of your life as if it were a banquet where you would behave graciously.
Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes.
Remember to discriminate between events themselves and your interpretations of them.
We are like actors in a play... It must be our business to act our given role as best as we possibly can.
Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there.
Your happiness depends on three things, all of which are within your power: your will, your ideas concerning the events in which you are involved, and the use you make of your ideas.
