To them that ask: Where hast thou seen the Gods, or how knowest thou certainly that there be Gods, that thou art so devout in their worship? I answer: Neither have I seen my own soul, and yet I respect and honor it.

Submit to the fate of your own free will.

Dress not thy thoughts in too fine a raiment. And be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds.

Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.

Men exist for each other. Then either improve them, or put up with them.

Nothing can come out of nothing, any more than a thing can go back to nothing.

For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.