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Make trial how the life of a good man succeeds with you, the life of one who is content with the lot appointed him by Providence

Spend, then, the fleeting remnant of your time in a spirit that accords with Nature, and depart contentedly.

To the man who is penetrated with true principles, the shortest, the most common hint is a sufficient memorial to keep him free of sorrow and fear.

Find your sole delight and recreation in proceeding from one unselfish action to another, with God ever in mind.

Is pleasure, then, the object of your being, and not action, and the exercise of your powers?

Acquire a method of perceiving how all things change into one another.

The present moment is the same for all men, and their loss, therefore, is equal, for it is clear that what they lose in death is but a fleeting instant of time.

Death, like birth, is a mystery of nature; the one a compounding of elements, the other a resolution into the same.

Tell over next all those you have known, one after the other: think how one buried his fellow, then lay dead himself, to be buried by a third.

For death also is one piece of the business of life, and, here as elsewhere, it is enough to do well what comes to our hand.

Love the art which you have learned, humble though it be, and in it find your recreation.

Observe continually that all things exist in change; and keep this thought ever with you, that Nature loves nothing more than changing what things now are, and making others like them.

the mind can convert and change everything that impedes its activity into matter for its action; hindrance in its work becomes its real help, and every obstruction makes for its progress

Of Severus, my brother, I learned to love my kinsmen, to love truth, to love justice.

Am I equipped for nothing but to lie among the bed-clothes and keep warm?

In rest you go beyond these limits, and beyond what is enough; but in action you do not fill the measure, and remain well within your powers.

Others, who love the art that they have made their own, exhaust themselves with labouring at it unwashed and unfed.

No man can hinder the proper work of the mind.

Bear toil and pain, not as if wretched under it, nor as courting pity or admiration.

If you are beaten off, return again to the effort, and content yourself that your conduct is generally such as becomes a man.

Recollect all you have passed through, all that you have had strength to bear.

if you see that anything is within man's power, and part of his proper work, conclude that you also may attain to it

Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.

Do not confound yourself by considering the whole of life, and by dwelling upon the multitude and greatness of the pains and troubles to which you may probably be exposed.

each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be