In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present - I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?

How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it.

And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?

When you find an unwillingness to rise early in the morning, endeavor to rouse your faculties, and act up to your kind, and consider that you have to do the business of a man; and that action is both beneficial and the end of your being.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.

If the gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for it.

I, who have never willfully pained another, have no business to pain myself.