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?

Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse.

The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

Do not fear death, but welcome it, since it too comes from nature. For just as we are young and grow old, and flourish and reach maturity, have teeth and a beard and grey hairs, conceive, become pregnant, and bring forth new life, and all the other natural processes that follow the seasons of our existence, so also do we have death. A thoughtful person will never take death lightly, impatiently, or scornfully, but will wait for it as one of life's natural processes.

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.