Quotes about Meditation

It is instructive to compare the Meditations with another famous book, the Imitation of Christ. There is the same ideal of self-control in both. It should be a man's task, says the Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.

Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can't hold out against that . . . well, then, heap shame upon it.

And as for thy life, consider what it is; a wind; not one constant wind neither, but every moment of an hour let out, and sucked in again.

What death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in itself, and by the abstractive power of reflection resolves into their parts all the things which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then consider it to be nothing else than an operation of nature;

How plain does it appear that there is not another condition of life so well suited for philosophising as this in which thou now happenest to be.

Your mind is your only strength; your reason is your only power.

How the mind can participate in the sensations of the body and yet maintain its serenity, and focus on its own well-being.

So there are two reasons to embrace what happens. One is that it's happening to you. It was prescribed for you, and it pertains to you. The thread was spun long ago, by the oldest cause of all.

Throw away your books; no longer distract yourself: it is not allowed.

Look within. Within is the fountain of Good, ready always to well forth if thou wilt alway delve.

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse