Limit time to the present. Meditate upon your last hour.
Because other people are fools, must you be so too?
Gluttony and drunkenness have two evils attendant on them; they make the carcass smart, as well as the pocket.
Infinity is a fathomless gulf, into which all things vanish.
Put it out of the power of truth to give you an ill character. If anybody reports you not to be an honest man let your practice give him the lie.
The sinner sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.
To my great-grandfather I owed the advice to dispense with the education of the schools and have good masters at home instead – and to realize that no expense should be grudged for this purpose.
There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won’t hail the occasion with delight.
The stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being.
And what after all is everlasting fame? Altogether vanity.
I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found himself a happy lot. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice.
Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee, what can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just?
Do you see what little is required of a man to live a well-tempered and god-fearing life? Obey these precepts, and the gods will ask nothing more.
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.
To her who gives and takes back all, to nature, the man who is instructed and modest says, Give what thou wilt; take back what thou wilt. And he says this not proudly, but obediently and well pleased with her.
Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases thee is satisfied.
But that which is useful is the better.
All that happens is as usual and familiar as the rose in spring and the crop in summer.
To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.
It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.