For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.

Consider how many do not even know your name, and how many will soon forget it, and how those who now praise you will presently blame you.

We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.

Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?'

Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.