Survey and test a prospective action before undertaking it. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture, lest you act rashly on raw impulse.
Your aim should be to view the world as an integrated whole, to faithfully incline your whole being toward the highest good, and to adopt the will of nature as your own.
If you intend to improve, throw away such thoughts as these: if I neglect my affairs, I shall not have the means of living: unless I chastise my slave, he will be bad. For it is better to die of hunger and so to be released from grief and fear than to live in abundance with perturbation; and it is better for your slave to be bad than for you to be unhappy.
If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you will not be disturbed.
Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him me. By the gods I would fain see a Stoic. Nay you cannot show me a finished Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his feet on the path.
I will throw you into prison.’ ‘Correction – it is my body you will throw there.
People are strange, they neither wish to live nor die.
If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in life.
No, I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it – or do I have to die moaning and groaning too?
We don’t need the victim’s entrails for their own sake, only for the sake of the signs they convey. And we don’t worship the crow or the raven – we worship God who communicates by means of them.
The reason why I lost my lamp was that the thief was superior to me in vigilance. He paid however this price for the lamp, that in exchange for it he consented to become a thief: in exchange for it, to become faithless.
Open your eyes: See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation.
Obstacles Lameness may strike your leg, but not your determination. Sickness may weaken your body, but not your character. Misfortune may drain your bank account, but not your generosity – unless you let it. Each time an obstacle arises, remind yourself of this truth: while it may hurt some part of you, it can’t touch your deepest self. The only person who can truly harm you – that is, make you a worse person – is you.
When the soul cries out, it is a sign that we have arrived at a necessary, mature stage of self-reflection. The secret is not to get stuck there dithering or wringing your hands, but to move forward by resolving to heal yourself.
No seas cobarde y evasivo.
Who exactly are these people that you want to be admired by? Aren’t they the same people you are in the habit of calling crazy? And is this your life ambition, then – to win the approval of lunatics.
We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What’s not under our control are the body and any of its parts, our possessions, parents, siblings, children, or country – anything with which we might associate.
The proper work of the mind is the exercise of choice, refusal, yearning, repulsion, preparation, purpose, and assent. What then can pollute and clog the mind’s proper functioning? Nothing but its own corrupt decisions.
If you wish to become proficient in the art of living with wisdom, do you think that you can eat and drink to excess?
Don’t mistake your assumptions for the truth.
Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions – in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing. The things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own.