The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That's all you need to know.

For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.

Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their mind.

Receive without conceit, release without struggle.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Remind oneself continually of one of those who practiced virtue in days gone by.

Enough of this wretched life and murmuring and apish tricks. Why art thou disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee? Is it the form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it. But besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods, then, now become at last more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine these things for a hundred years or three.