Letters from a Stoic

"No one can be content with his lot unless he is willing to move from it."

"You will never live long enough to bring your body to perfect health and strength."

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."

"Invest in yourself and never stop improving."

"Calamity reveals those who are not truly friends."

"The universe has already secured freedom for you, if you are willing to use it."

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

"Everybody hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present."

"The best ideas are common property."

"True security is the security of the mind."

"Better to lose health like a spendthrift than to lose life like a miser."

"You will always find some Eskimo ready to instruct the Congolese on how to cope with heat."

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."

"If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person."

"The man who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive."

"Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire."

"Receive without pride, let go without attachment."

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

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

"Do not despise a reputation once lost."

"You have within you every capacity you need; use them."

"There is no greater wealth than a healthy body and a peaceful mind."

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

"The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires."

"Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it."

"Life is not about having good days. It's about appreciating the ones you have."

"Retirement does not remove a man from the world."

"The time will never 'be just right.' Start where you stand."

"No one can live happily who looks only to himself."

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