Letters from a Stoic

"A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it."

"The disgrace lies not in doing things, but in doing them unwillingly."

"Just as it is madness to hate all mankind because some are wicked, so it is madness to love all because some are good."

"Life is long if you know how to use it."

"It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself."

"No one can live happily who looks only to himself and turns everything to his own advantage."

"Withdraw into yourself, but first prepare a sanctuary there."

"The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

"You will die—yes, you too will die! Do you need to be reminded of your mortality?"

"The time that makes others rich makes you poor."

"How much better to pursue a straight course through life than to wander in all directions."

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."

"There is no one who can live happily who looks only to himself and turns everything to his own advantage."

"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."

"The greatest wealth is poverty of desires."

"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."

"True happiness is to enjoy your present possessions, without wishing for what you have not."

"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."

"The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable."

"Seek not to find a remedy for your grief, but to understand why you grieve."

"It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about them."

"Nature does not hurry; yet everything is accomplished."

"To be always occupied and to have no time for philosophy—this is a tragedy."

"The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words."

"No one is free who is a slave to the body."

"Grief too bears its part in the universal law of change."

"There is no greater blessing than a friend who enjoys your happiness as much as you do."

"It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself."

"The good man will use reason and will listen to it as it prompts him."

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."