“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.”
“…but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.”
“For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.”
“…and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.”
“And he remembers also that every rational animal is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to man’s nature.”
“Let no act be done without a purpose…”
“Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.”
“…making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man.”
“Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its places, and this will be carried away too.”
“Think of the universal substance, of which thou hast a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art.”
“He who loves fame considers another man’s activity to be his own good; and he who loves pleasure, his on sensations; but he who has understanding, considers his own acts to be his own good.”
“…and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrong-doer has done thee no harm, for he has not made thy ruling faculty worse than it was before.”
“When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong…It is thy duty then to pardon him. But if thou dost not think such things to be good or evil, thou wilt more readily be well-disposed to him who is in error.”
“Think of thy last hour. Let the wrong which is done by man stay there where the wrong was done.”
“…to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?”
“Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”
“Take care not to feel towards the inhuman as they feel towards men.”
“The perfect moral character consists in this, passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited, nor torpid, nor playing the hypocrite.”
“…thou hast leisure to be superior to love of fame, and not to be vexed at stupid and ungrateful people, nay even to care for them.”
“Receive [wealth or prosperity] without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.”
“No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.”
“Constantly consider how all things such as they now are, in time past also were; and consider that they will be the same again. And place before thy eyes entire dramas and stages of the same form, whatever thou hast learned from thy experience or from older history;”
“Severally on the occasion of everything that thou doest, pause and ask thyself, if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives thee of this.”
“These are the properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, analyzes itself, and makes itself such as it chooses; the fruit which it bears itself enjoys—
“But I will be mild and benevolent towards every man, and ready to show even him his mistake, not reproachfully, nor yet as making a display of my endurance, but nobly and honestly, like the great Phocion, unless he only assumed it.”
“Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.”
“Sixth, consider when thou art much vexed or grieved, that man’s life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.”
“…but that mildness and gentleness, as the are more agreeable to human nature, so also are they more manly; and he who possesses these qualities possesses strength, nerves and courage, and not the man who is subject to fits of passion and discontent.”
“…for there is no veil over a star.”
