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.

The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do.

All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well.

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.

Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.

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

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.

Let your occupations be few, says the sage, "if you would lead a tranquil life."

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.

The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us-how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place.

A man should be upright, not kept upright.

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

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.

Let no act be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished rules that govern its kind.

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

Choose not to be harmed-and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed-and you haven't been.

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

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.

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?" But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.

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

Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal.

Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion... I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any evil; to content myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is incidental to great wealth.

But that which is useful is the better.

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

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.

By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.

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

That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.

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.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.

Remember that all is opinion.

Disturbance comes only from within-from our own perceptions.

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.

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

Doth perfect beauty stand in need of praise at all? Nay; no more than law, no more than truth, no more than loving kindness, nor than modesty.

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.

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul. Variant translation: Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

...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.

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

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.

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.

Remember this- that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.

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 world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.

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.

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

Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised. Variant: That which is really beautiful has no need of anything.

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

The universe is flux, life is opinion. The universe is (constant) change, life is (mere) presumption.