Timeless Stoic Wisdom: 100 Quotes on Happiness & Gratitude That Still Illuminate Our Lives

Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD)

1. The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

2. Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself.

3. He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

4. Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.

5. When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive—to think, to enjoy, to love.

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

7. Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears.

8. To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

9. Think of what you have rather than of what you lack.

10. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice.

11. Perfection of character: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense.

12. The happiness and unhappiness of the rational animal depend not on feelings but on actions.

13. If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it.

14. How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

15. I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found a happy lot.

16. Very little is needed to make a happy life.

17. A man’s happiness is living according to nature.

18. Enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future.

19. Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation.

20. Constantly regard the universe as one living being.

Seneca the Younger (4 BC–65 AD)

1. True happiness is to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future.

2. No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity.

3. It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much.

4. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

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

6. Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.

7. Associate with people who are likely to improve you.

8. A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver.

9. I am grateful not in order that another may be ready to benefit me, but simply because gratitude itself is beautiful.

10. We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation.

11. Benefits, as well as injuries, depend on the spirit in which they are conferred.

12. Receiving a benefit with gratitude is the first installment of its repayment.

13. True generosity is measured not by the ends of the act but by the spirit from which it springs.

14. What has pleased you, let others share your gratitude.

15. Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.

16. Even after a poor crop one should sow again; for often one year’s fertility follows barrenness.

17. Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure.

18. There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.

19. As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

20. Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

Epictetus (55–135 AD)

1. There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things beyond our control.

2. Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.

3. No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have.

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

5. The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

6. Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

7. If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, answer, ‘He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.’

8. The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you.

9. Do not seek for things to happen as you wish; but wish for things to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

10. Be not ungrateful, even to those who do you wrong.

11. He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.

12. Contentment comes from the mastery of desires.

13. First, learn the meaning of what you say; then speak.

14. Remember: it is not events themselves that disturb men, but their judgments about those events.

15. Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

16. Withdraw into yourself as far as you can. Welcome those whom you can improve.

17. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun.

18. Kindness is invincible when it’s sincere.

19. Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake, in little things; from them proceed to greater.

20. Treat every moment as an opportunity for virtue.

Zeno of Citium (334–262 BC)

1. Man conquers the world by conquering himself.

2. The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.

3. We have two ears and one mouth so we should listen more than we speak.

4. Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue.

5. Steel your sensibilities so that life shall hurt you as little as possible.

6. Extravagance is its own destroyer.

7. No loss should grieve us more than the loss of time.

8. All the good are friends of one another.

9. True wealth lies in wanting what one already has.

10. Love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.

Cleanthes (331–232 BC)

1. Lead me, Zeus, and you, Fate, wherever you have assigned me to go.

2. The willing are led by fate; the reluctant are dragged.

3. A good character is the foundation of a happy life.

4. Happiness lies in self-mastery.

5. No one is free who is not master of himself.

Musonius Rufus (30–100 AD)

1. Learn more than to talk; learn to live gratefully.

2. Complaints and laments are the triumph of captivity over the mind.

3. A life in accordance with virtue is the only secure source of happiness.

4. The temperate man rejoices in moderation.

5. Your lot is happy if you make it so.

Cicero & Other Stoics

1. Live as brave men; if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts. — Cicero

2. Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through trial can the soul be strengthened. — Helen Keller

3. Our greatest glory is not never falling but rising every time we fall. — Confucius

4. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it’s the courage to continue that counts. — Churchill

5. That which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Nietzsche

6. Don’t pray for lighter burdens, pray for stronger backs. — Buddha

7. Perseverance is a great element of success. — Franklin

8. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. — Murakami

9. People lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn. — Seneca

10. What concerns me is not the way things are, but how people think things are. — Epictetus

Additional Reflections on Gratitude & Joy

1. Rejoice in the things you have been given.

2. Turn every obstacle into an object of gratitude.

3. Observe how few things you really need to be happy.

4. Treat every act of kindness as a sacrament.

5. Find joy in the simple, unnoticed moments.

6. Let gratitude transform your day.

7. Happiness lies in loving what you do.

8. Hold fast to what brings you meaning.

9. Remember: you own only what you can part with.

10. Be thankful for the gift of this present moment.

Let these Stoic quotes remind you every day that happiness and gratitude are always within your grasp—not as fleeting pleasures, but as steadfast habits of the heart and mind.