When pain is unbearable it destroys us; when it does not it is bearable.
Do not expect Plato’s ideal republic; be satisfied with even the smallest step forward, and consider this no small achievement.
Find joy in simplicity, self-respect, and indifference to what lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race. Follow the divine.
A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.
Reflect often upon the rapidity with which all existing things, or things coming into existence, sweep past us and are carried away.
Today I escaped all circumstance, or rather I cast out all circumstance, for it was not outside me, but within my judgements.
The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.
How soon will time cover all things.
The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.
If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.
Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature?
Whatever may happen to you was prepared for you from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of your being.
Can anything that is useful be accomplished without change?
Either an ordered Universe or a medley heaped together mechanically but still an order; or can order subsist in you and disorder in the Whole! And that, too, when all things are so distinguished and yet intermingled and sympathetic.
Tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.
The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it.
Remember that all things are only opinion and that it is in your power to think as you please.
The constant recollection of death is the test of human conduct.
This is the chief thing: be not perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal.
No form of nature is inferior to art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms. – Variant: There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.