Or, if you enjoy living with Greeks also, spend your time with Socrates and with Zeno: the former will show you how to die if it be necessary; the latter how to die before it is necessary. Live with Chrysippus, with Posidonius: they will make you acquainted with things earthly and things heavenly; they will bid you work hard over something more than neat turns of language and phrases mouthed forth for the entertainment of listeners; they will bid you be stout of heart and rise superior to threats. The only harbour safe from the seething storms of this life is scorn of the future, a firm stand, a readiness to receive Fortune's missiles full in the breast, neither skulking nor turning the back.

If you are wise, mingle these two elements: do not hope without despair, or despair without hope.

"New friends, however, will not be the same." No, nor will you yourself remain the same; you change with every day and every hour.

What profit is there in crossing the sea and in going from one city to another? If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality. Perhaps you have reached Athens, or perhaps Rhodes; choose any state you fancy, how does it matter what its character may be? You will be bringing to it your own.

Socrates is reported to have replied, when a certain person complained of having received no benefit from his travels: "It serves you right! You travelled in your own company!"

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often this living nobly means that you cannot live long.

Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

But how foolish it is to set out one's life, when one is not even owner of the morrow!

Accept in an unruffled spirit that which is inevitable.

Whoever complains about the death of anyone, is complaining that he was a man. Everyone is bound by the same terms: he who is privileged to be born, is destined to die.