If we are not stupid or insincere when we say that the good or ill of man lies within his own will, and that all beside is nothing to us, why are we still troubled?
You can be invincible, if you enter into no contest in which it is not in your power to conquer.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to a humble and grateful mind.
If you would improve, submit to be considered wihout sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing; and if you shall seem to someone to be a person of importance, distrust yourself.
The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.
If you wish to live a life free from sorrow, think of what is going to happen as if it had already happened.
Appear to know only this – never to fail nor fall.
Forgiveness is better than revenge, for forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge is the sign of a savage nature. the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.
Let no man think that he is loved by any who loveth none.
When you let go of your attention for a little while, do not think you may recover it whenever you please.
Do not give sentence in another tribunal till you have been yourself judged in the tribunal of Justice.
Every art and every faculty contemplates certain things as its principal objects.
If you would cure anger, do not feed it. Say to yourself: ‘I used to be angry every day; then every other day; now only every third or fourth day.’ When you reach thirty days offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods.
It is no easy thing for a principle to become a man’s own unless each day he maintains it and works it out in his life.
What is yours is to play the assigned part well. But to choose it belongs to someone else.
I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.
There is only one thing for which God has sent me into the world, and that is to develop every kind of virtue or strength, and there is nothing in all the world that I cannot use for this purpose.
We must ever bear in mind – that apart from the will there is nothing good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or to direct events, but merely to accept them with intelligence.
In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for this own misdeeds.