...be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood-and nothing else is under your control.

How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility. To shrug it all off and wipe it clean--every annoyance and distraction--and reach utter stillness. Child's play.

You don't love yourself enough. Or you'd love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they're really possessed by what they do, they'd rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?

Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

It needs to realize that what happens to everyone-bad and good alike-is neither good nor bad.

Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

That which comes after ever conforms to that which has gone before.

"Those who have forgotten where the road leads." "They are at odds with what is all around them"-the all-directing logos. And "they find alien what they meet with every day."

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Don't let yourself forget how many doctors have died, after furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others' ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves. How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal.

To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.

It's unfortunate that this has happened. No. It's fortunate that this has happened and I've remained unharmed by it-not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it.

So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.

Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: 'I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?' (Hays translation) At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: "I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?

All that happens is as usual and familiar as the rose in spring and the crop in summer.

But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast, select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not. At the same time, however, take care that thou dost not, through being so pleased with them, accustom thyself to overvalue them, so as to be disturbed if ever thou shouldst not have them.

Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

How many, once lauded in song, are given over to the forgotten; and how many who sung their praises are clean gone long ago!

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to make up the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one reason.

Of things that are external, happen what will to that which can suffer by external accidents. Those things that suffer let them complain themselves, if they will; as for me, as long as I conceive no such thing, that that which is happened is evil, I have no hurt; and it is in my power not to conceive any such thing.

..If you are troubled by external circumstances, it is not the circumstances that trouble you, but your own perception of them - and they are in your power to change at any time.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Whatsoever any man either doth or saith, thou must be good; not for any man's sake, but for thine own nature's sake; as if either gold, or the emerald, or purple, should ever be saying to themselves, Whatsoever any man either doth or saith, I must still be an emerald, and I must keep my colour.

Remember, that to change thy mind upon occasion, and to follow him that is able to rectify thee, is equally ingenuous, as to find out at the first, what is right and just, without help. For of thee nothing is required, that is beyond the extent of thine own deliberation and judgment, and of thine own understanding.

No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.

An angry countenance is much against nature, and it is oftentimes the proper countenance of them that are at the point of death. But were it so, that all anger and passion were so thoroughly quenched in thee, that it were altogether impossible to kindle it any more, yet herein must not thou rest satisfied, but further endeavour by good consequence of true ratiocination, perfectly to conceive and understand, that all anger and passion is against reason.

Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?

Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.

It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.

Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of there substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may ever be new.

I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled?

How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying . . . or busy with other assignments.

Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.

The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Whensoever by some present hard occurrences thou art constrained to be in some sort troubled and vexed, return unto thyself as soon as may be, and be not out of tune longer than thou must needs. For so shalt thou be the better able to keep thy part another time, and to maintain the harmony, if thou dost use thyself to this continually; once out, presently to have recourse unto it, and to begin again.

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance. Variant translation: If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.

I do what is mine to do; the rest doesn't disturb me.

Death,-a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.

The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't.