But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.

I consist of a little body and a soul.

Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.

Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.

Take heed not to be transformed into a Caesar, not to be dipped in the purple dye, for it does happen. Keep yourself therefore, simple, good, pure, grave, unaffected, the friend of justice, religious, kind, affectionate, strong for your proper work. Wrestle to be the man philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods, save men. Life is brief; there is but one harvest of earthly existence, a holy disposition and neighborly acts.

Stir up thy mind, and recall thy wits again from thy natural dreams, and visions, and when thou art perfectly awoken, and canst perceive that they were but dreams that troubled thee, as one newly awakened out of another kind of sleep look upon these worldly things with the same mind as thou didst upon those, that thou sawest in thy sleep.

Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.

...undefiled by pleasures, invulnerable to any pain, untouched by arrogance, unaffected by meanness, an athlete in the greatest of all contests-the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.

For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.

No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into "the secrets of the nether world," as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his neighbour's heart.

The lot assigned to every man is suited to him, and suits him to itself.

For we carry our fate with us - and it carries us.

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

A man should be upright, not kept upright.

But that which is useful is the better.

Choose what's best.-Best is what benefits me.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Respect the faculty that forms thy judgments.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.

Remember that all is opinion.

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil.

Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived-not in the least like the rich.

From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions.

Of Fronto, to how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection.

Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love.

Self-control and resistance to distractions. Optimism in adversity-especially illness.

He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. (Hays translation) Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.

We are all made for mutual assistance, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids, as the rows of the upper and under teeth, from whence it follows that clashing and opposition is perfectly unnatural.

Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. This that I am, whatever it be, is mere flesh and a little breathe and the ruling Reason, This Being of mine, whatever it really is, consists of a little flesh, a little breath, and the part which governs.

What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.

There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return.

Concentrate every minute like a Roman-like a man-on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.

Yes, you can--if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.

You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you. Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.

Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.

This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole...

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment- If you can embrace this without fear or expectation-can find fulfillment in what you're doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)-then your life will be happy.

The span we live is small-small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.

You have a mind? -Yes. Well, why not use it?

Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good.

Many the lumps of frankincense on the same altar; one falls there early and another late, but it makes no difference.

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able-be good.