2.14 Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no life except the one he loses.
2.17. Where, then can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one alone: Philosophy. To be a philosopher is to keep unsullied and unscathed the divine spirit within him, so that it may transcend all pleasure and pain, take nothing in hand without purpose and nothing falsely or with dissimulation, depend not not on another’s actions or inactions, accept each and every dispensation as coming from the same source as itself—and last and chief, wait with a good grace for death, as no more than a simple dissolving of the elements whereof each living thing is decomposed.
3.1 When a loaf of bread, for instance, is in the oven, cracks appear in it here and there; and these flaws though not intended in the backing, have a rightness of their own and sharpen the appetite. Figs, again, at the their ripest will also crack open. When olives are on the verge of falling, the very imminence of decay adds its peculiar beauty to the fruit.
6.48 When you would have a cordial for your spirits think of the good qualities of your friends: this one’s capability, that one’s self-effacement, another’s generosity, and so forth. There is no surer remedy for the dejection that to see examples of the different virtues displayed in the characters of those around us, exhibiting themselves as plenteously as can be.
6.54 What is no good for the hive is no good for the bee.
7.64 When in pain, always be prompt to remind yourself that there is nothing shameful about it nothing prejudicial to the mind at the helm, which suffers no injury either in its rational or social aspect.
8.17 If the choice is yours, why do the thing? If another’s where are you to lay the blame for it? On gods? On atoms? Either would be insanity.
8.36 Never confuse yourself by visions of an entire lifetime at once. That is, do not let your thoughts range over the whole multitude and variety of the misfortunes that may befall you, but rather, as you encounter each one, ask yourself, “What is there unendurable, so insupportable in this?”…Remember that is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone.
8.50 Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in you r path? Turn aside. Do not go to say, “Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?” The student of nature will only laugh at you; just as a carpenter or a shoemaker will laugh if you found fault with the shavings and craps from their work which you saw in there shop. That is the miracle of her workmanship: that in spite of this self-limitation, she nevertheless transmutes into herself everything that seems worn-out…and re-fashions it into new creations.
9.1 It is a sin to pursue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as an evil.
9.37 Enough of this miserable way of life, these everlasting grumbles, these monkey antics. Why must you agitate yourself so? Nothing unprecedented is happening, so what is it that disturbs you?
10.16 Waste no more arguing what a good man should be. Be one.