When you actively engage in gradually refining yourself, you retreat from your lazy ways of covering yourself or making excuses. Instead of feeling a persistent current of low-level shame, you move forward by using the creative possibilities of this moment, your current situation.

As a man, casting off worn out garments taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, entereth into ones that are new.

Within our control are our own opinions, aspirations, and desires and the demons that distract us from these goals. Outside of our control are such things as what kind of body we have, whether or not we are born into wealth, and how we are regarded by others.

Freedom isn't the right or ability to do whatever you please. Freedom comes from understanding the limits of our own power and the inherent limits set in place by nature. By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, you become truly free.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Everything has two handles,-one by which it may be borne; another by which it cannot.

A soul which is conversant with virtue is like an ever flowing source, for it is pure and tranquil and potable and sweet and communicative (social) and rich and harmless and free from mischief.