Anything that is beautiful is beautiful just as it is. Praise forms no part of its beauty, since praise makes things neither better nor worse. This applies even more to what it commonly called beautiful: natural objects, for example, or works of art. True beauty has no need of anything beyond itself.

Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die.

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.

The substance of the universe is obedient and compliant; and the reason which governs it has in itself no cause for doing evil, for it has no malice, nor does it do evil to anything, nor is anything harmed by it. But all things are made and perfected according to this reason.

Take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Reflect often upon the rapidity with which all existing things, or things coming into existence, sweep past us and are carried away.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.