Are you distracted by outward cares? Then allow yourself a space of quiet wherein you can add to your knowledge of the Good and learn to curb your restlessness. Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. Avail yourself often, then, of this retirement, and so continually renew yourself.

Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within.

He does not write at all whose poems no man reads

Why should anyone be afraid of change? What can take place without it? What can be more pleasing or more suitable to universal nature? Can you take your bath without the firewood undergoing a change? Can you eat without the food undergoing a change? And can anything useful be done without change? Don't you see that for you to change is just the same, and is equally necessary for universal nature?

Dress not thy thoughts in too fine a raiment. And be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds.

Nature set a limit on sleep - as it did on eating and drinking. And youre over the limit. But not of working. There youre still below your quota. You dont love yourself enough. Or youd love your nature too and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it. They even forget to wash and eat.

Bear in mind that the measure of a man is the worth of the things he cares about. If it is good to say or do something, then it is even better to be criticized for having said or done it.