Hast thou reason? I have. Why then dost not thou use it? For if this does its own work, what else dost thou wish?

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

Don't let your imagination to be crushed by life as a whole. Don't try to pictures everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand. ...Then remind yourself that past and present have no power over you. Only the present.

Think nothing profitable to you which compels you to break a promise, to lose your self respect, to hate any person, to curse, to act the hypocrite.

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .

Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind.

It will suffice thee to remember as concerning pain ... that the mind may, by stopping all manner of commerce and sympathy with the body, still retain its own tranquility.