Avoid banquets which are given by strangers and by ignorant persons.
Apropos of which, Diogenes says somewhere that one way to guarantee freedom is to be ready to die.
For you will learn by experience that it’s true: the things that men admire and work so hard to get prove useless to them once they’re theirs.
As you travel the path of philosophy, be content to be considered plain or even foolish. Do not strive to be celebrated for anything. If you are praised by others, be skeptical of yourself. For it it is no easy feat to hold onto your inner harmony while collecting accolades. When grasping for one, you are likely to drop the other.
For what else are tragedies but the ordeals of people who have come to value externals, tricked out in tragic verse?
In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one.
Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions.
Small-minded people habitually reproach others for their own misfortunes. Average people reproach themselves. Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame something or someone is foolishness, that there is nothing to be gained in blaming, whether it be others or oneself.
What is the product of virtue? Tranquillity.
Stop judging the things that fate brings you as “good” or “evil”; only judge your own thoughts, desires, and actions as good or evil. If you suppose events to be good or evil in themselves, when life doesn’t go as you wish you will inevitably blame the Author.
With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for making a proper use of it. If you see an attractive person, you will find that self-restraint is the ability you have against your desire. If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances of things will not hurry you away along with them.
Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.
Follow your principles as though they were laws. Do not worry if others criticize or laugh at you, for their opinions are not your concern.
If you didn’t learn these things in order to demonstrate them in practice, what did you learn them for?
If any one trusted your body to the first man he met, you would be indignant, but yet you trust your mind to the chance comer, and allow it to be disturbed and confounded if he revile you; are you not ashamed to do so?
These are not the circumstances that I want.’ Is it up to you to choose them? You have been given that particular body, these particular parents and brothers, this particular social position and place to live. You come to me hoping that I can somehow change these circumstances for you, not even conscious of the assets that are already yours that make it possible to cope with any situation you face.
If anyone tells you that a certain person has spoken in a bad way about you, don’t make excuses about what has been said, but answer: “He was ignorant of my other faults, otherwise he would have mentioned those also.
Faithfulness is the antidote to bitterness and confusion.
Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought around to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation. Does it pass by you? Don’t stop it. Is it not yet come? Don’t stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you.
Make a bad beginning and you’ll contend with troubles ever after.