It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

We need to regularly stop and take stock; to sit down and determine within ourselves which things are worth valuing and which things are not; which risks are worth the cost and which are not. Even the most confusing or hurtful aspects of life can be made more tolerable by clear seeing and by choice.

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.

The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

No living being is held by anything so strongly as by its own needs. Whatever therefore appears a hindrance to these, be it brother, or father, or child, or mistress, or friend, is hated, abhorred, execrated.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

You may fetter my leg, but Zeus himself cannot get the better of my free will.