Never value the advantages derived from anything involving breach of faith, loss of self-respect, hatred, suspicion, or execration of others, insincerity, or the desire for something which has to be veiled and curtained.
The best revenge is not to do as they do.
Today I escaped all circumstance, or rather I cast out all circumstance, for it was not outside me, but within my judgements.
All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.
Do not let the future disturb you, for you will arrive there, if you arrive, with the same reason you now apply to the present.
How unlucky I am that this should happen to me. But not at all. Perhaps, say how lucky I am that I am not broken by what has happened, and I am not afraid of what is about to happen. For the same blow might have stricken anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation and complaint.
Kindness is unconquerable, so long as it is without flattery or hypocrisy. For what can the most insolent man do to you, if you contrive to be kind to him, and if you have the chance gently advise and calmly show him what is right…and point this out tactfully and from a universal perspective. But you must not do this with sarcasm or reproach, but lovingly and without anger in your soul.
Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces – to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it – and makes it burn still higher.
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.
Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.
As for others whose lives are not so ordered, he reminds himself constantly of the characters they exhibit daily and nightly at home and abroad, and of the sort of society they frequent; and the approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.
Everything of the body is a river. Everything of the soul is dream and vapour. Life is war and the abode of a stranger. The only fame after death is oblivion.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
Since it is possible that you might depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.
The world is mere change, and this life, opinion.
Will any man despise me? Let him see to it. But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that deserves to be despised.
Death is a cessation from the impression of the senses, the tyranny of the passions, the errors of the mind, and the servitude of the body.
He is so rich, he has no room to shit.
It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men’s badness, which is impossible.
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Unhappy am I because this has happened to me. Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future.
All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike.
Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.
Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.
Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.
Be cheerful also, and seek not external help nor the tranquility which others give. A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.
Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.
If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.
Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material.
Stupidity is expecting figs in winter, or children in old age.
There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won’t hail the occasion with delight.
Wilt thou, then, my soul, never be good and simple and one and naked, more manifest than the body which surrounds thee?
A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.
Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
He who eats my bread does my will.
It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul, or to be a decent human being.
No more roundabout discussions of what makes a good man. Be one!
The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.
