Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.

Surrender your life serenely, as serenely as the One who takes it from you

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?

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

He truly sorrows who sorrows unseen

A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.

For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.

There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won’t hail the occasion with delight.

Our thoughts is what our life make it

The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

The guest at the lower end of the middle couch, with three hairs on his bald head and his scalp streaked with pigment, who is digging in his big mouth with a toothpick, is a...

Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none less free that you were before.

As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.

Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear

I could do without your face, Chloe, and without your neck, and your hands, and your limbs, and to save myself the trouble of mentioning the points in detail, I could do without you altogether

The time of a man’s life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain,...

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.

If all emotions are common coin, then what is unique to the good man?To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of...

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered

Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect.

A cucumber is bitter.’ Throw it away. ‘There are briars in the road.’ Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, ‘And why were such things made in the world?

With red hair, a black face, a cloven foot, and blear eyes, you show the world a prodigy, Zoilus, if you are an honest man

The one who lives the longest and the one who lives the shortest, when it comes to dying lose one and the same thing.

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to...

Nothing is more scandalous than a man that is proud of his humility.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.

It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.

Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life – there, if one must speak out, the real man.

Rest lightly on her earth, for she trod never heavily on thee

Life is not merely being alive, but being well

Remember this, – that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life

The man of ambition thinks to find his good in the operations of others; the man of pleasure in his own sensations; but the man of understanding in his own actions.

Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.

Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realise the nature of the...

We are the other of the other

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike

Nothing is evil which is according to nature.

Light may earth’s crumbling sand be laid on thee, that dogs may dig thy bones up easily

When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans

Be content to seem what you really are

striid andWthdraw into yourself. Our master-reason asks no more than to act justly, and thereby to achieve calm.

Even the least of our activities ought to have some end in view.