Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.
What makes this gem from the Stoic emperor remarkable is not merely the call to acceptance—any self-help manual offers that—but his insistence that acceptance and affection go hand in hand. Most people imagine resignation as a cold, gritted-teeth affair; Marcus Aurelius understood that you cannot genuinely adapt to your circumstances without also softening toward the people in them. When you're stuck in a difficult workplace or a strained marriage, the usual advice is "accept what you cannot change," but this demands something harder: that you actually *like* the humans involved, that you treat them as destiny's companions rather than destiny's mistakes. That shift from tolerance to genuine regard is what transforms a bearable life into one worth living.
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Viktor Frankl“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you ast...”
Rumi“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.”
Steve Jobs