Death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful - and hence neither good nor bad.

Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible; life in a palace is possible; therefore even in a palace a right life is possible.

When men hate or blame you, or say hurtful things about you, look deeply into their hearts and see what kind of men they are. You'll see how unnecessary it is to strain after their good opinion. Yet you must still think kindly of them. they are your neighbors. The gods help them as they do you, by dreams and oracles, to win their hearts' desires.

A spider is proud when it has caught a fly; one man when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another when he has taken wild boars, and another when he has taken bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians. Are not these robbers, if you examine their opinions?

If you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.

The sinner sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.