Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it.

To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing - here is the perfection of character.

Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible; life in a palace is possible; therefore even in a palace a right life is possible.

Take the shortest route. The one that nature planned - to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculations and pretension.

Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity.

Severally on the occasion of everything that thou doest, pause and ask thyself, if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives thee of this.

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.