To a longer and worse life, a shorter and better is by all means to be preferred.

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.

The wise realize that some things are within their control, and most things are not. They learn early on to distinguish between what they can and can't regulate.

I am not eternity, but a man; a part of the whole, as an hour is of the day.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.

If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your own mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?

Does a man reproach thee for being proud or ill-natured, envious or conceited, ignorant or detracting? Consider with thyself whether his reproaches are true. If they are not, consider that thou art not the person whom he reproaches, but that he reviles an imaginary being, and perhaps loves what thou really art, though he hates what thou appearest to be.