If you separate from . . . everything you have done in the past, everything that disturbs you about the future . . . and apply yourself to living the life that you are living-that is to say, the present-you can live all the time that remains to you until your death in calm, benevolence, and serenity.

A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another as a vine to bear grapes again in season.

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and ay, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?'

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

At day's first light have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that "I am rising for the work of man."

Above, below, all around are the movements of the elements. But the motion of virtue is in none of these: it is something more divine, and advancing by a way hardly observed it goes happily on its road.

All that is from the gods is full of Providence.