The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.
Thanks to the gods I didn’t spend much time while growing up with my grandfather’s mistress and preserved the flower of my youth, waiting for the proper time to demonstrate my virility.
Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.
But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.
Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.
Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered: and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree, no, not any one with himself: and the whole earth too is a point.
Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.
All those things at which thou wishest to arrive by a circuitous road, thou canst have now, if thou dost not refuse them to thyself.
You should banish any thoughts of how you may appear to others.
Even while a thing is in the act of coming into existence, some part of it has already ceased to be.
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.
Let goodness go with the doing.
Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.
It is a shame for the soul to be first to give way in this life, when thy body does not give way.
Am I doing anything? I do it with reference to the good of mankind. Does anything happen to me? I receive it and refer it to the gods, and the source of all things, from which all that happens is derived.
There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.
Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind.
Why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.
If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong.
If any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.