16. To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.
Dost thou grieve that thou dost weigh but so many pounds, and not three hundred rather? Just as much reason hast thou to grieve that thou must live but so many years, and not longer. For as for bulk and substance thou dost content thyself with that proportion of it that is allotted unto thee, so shouldst thou for time.
How many of them who came into the world at the same time when I did, are already gone out of it?
Whatsoever he said, all men believed him that as he spake, so he thought, and whatsoever he did, that he did it with a good intent.
When you deal with irrational animals, with things and circumstances, be generous and straightforward. You are rational; they are not. When you deal with fellow human beings, behave as one. They share in the logos. And invoke the gods regardless. Don’t worry about how long you’ll go on doing this. A single afternoon would be enough. 24.
To follow the logos in all things is to be relaxed and energetic, joyful and serious at once.
The highest good of man is consciously to work with God for the common good, and this is the sense in which the Stoic tried to live in accord with nature. In the individual it is virtue alone which enables him to do this; as Providence rules the universe, so virtue in the soul must rule man.
At all times, look at the thing itself – the thing behind the appearance – and unpack it by analysis: cause substance purpose and the length of time it exists.
The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature – along the road they share.
Thy present opinion founded on understanding, and thy present conduct directed to social good, and thy present disposition of contentment with everything which happens- that is enough. Wipe out imagination: check desire: extinguish appetite: keep the ruling faculty in its own power. Among.
The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.
And moreover, to fear pain is to fear something that’s bound to happen, the world being what it is – and that again is blasphemy.
Chief among these are inappropriate value judgments: the designation as “good” or “evil” of things that in fact are neither good nor evil.
This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad.
And as for thy life, consider what it is; a wind; not one constant wind neither, but every moment of an hour let out, and sucked in again.
Be neither a great talker, nor a great undertaker.
Better is what benefits.
Will a little fame distract you?
Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable? In.
He could say, it is true, ’either there is a God, and then all is well; or if all things go by chance and fortune, yet mayest thou use thine own providence in those things that concern thee properly; and then art thou well.