Quote checked against the text
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — attributed to Marcus Aurelius
Not found. The sentence was searched in Long 1862 (12 books, 487 chapters) and, in French, Couat 1904 and Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire 1876 (12 books each) and did not appear; the search and its result are below.
Not found. “Power over your mind” and “not outside events” return nothing in the twelve books of Long’s 1862 translation; both fragments appear only in the lists of quotations that circulate online, where the sentence is sometimes glued to another one about the privilege of being alive.
The nearest thing in the text is Book VIII, chapter 47: “If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now.” The chapter is about a judgment that can be removed, not about a strength to be found, and it does not oppose the mind to events.
We have no locator for the sentence as it circulates, so it carries no reference. The chapter on judgment is in the app with its reference: Meditations, VIII, 47.
What we searched
Each fragment is searched, normalized, in every file of the editions below. The block is the search and its result, replayed at each build.
The wording was searched in Long 1862 (12 books, 487 chapters) and, in French, Couat 1904 and Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire 1876 (12 books each).
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang en --author aurele "power over your mind" "not outside events" George Long, 1862 — Meditations · 12 books, 487 chapters (1 file) "power over your mind" 0 hits "not outside events" 0 hits $ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang fr --author aurele "pouvoir sur ton esprit" "tu trouveras la force" Auguste Couat, 1904 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters (IV, 19–20 and VII, 47–48 merged by the translator) (12 files) "pouvoir sur ton esprit" 0 hits "tu trouveras la force" 0 hits Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, 1876 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters — second French edition, shown beside Couat (12 files) "pouvoir sur ton esprit" 0 hits "tu trouveras la force" 0 hits
This sentence appears 2 times in the list of circulating quotes we collected on 2026-08-09.
What the text says
There is no passage to quote: the wording is in none of the editions searched above.
How to cite
This sentence has no canonical reference: it is not in the editions we hold. Quoting it with a book and chapter would be a false reference.
Other sentences checked
All sentences attributed to Marcus AureliusAll quote checks
Every passage in Stoïque carries its reference. The 166 passages of Marcus Aurelius are free in the app, each with its book and chapter.