Don't be prideful with any excellence that is not your own

Give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths.

What is it to be a philosopher? Is it not to be prepared against events?

We can't control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.

Fight against yourself, recover yourself to decency, to modesty, to freedom. And, in the first place, condemn your actions; but when you have condemned them, do not despair of yourself. For both ruin and recovery are from within.

By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free.

Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.