Who wants to live with delusion and prejudice, being unjust, undisciplined, mean and ungrateful? ‘No one.’ No bad person, then, lives the way he wants, and no bad man is free.

He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.

Show me someone untroubled with disturbing thoughts about illness, danger, death, exile or loss of reputation. By all the gods, I want to see a Stoic!

Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. 

When another blames you or hates you, or when men say anything injurious about you, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. You will discover that there is no reason to be concerned that these men have this or that opinion about you.

Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.

Pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting if you bear in mind that it has its limits, and if you add nothing to it in imagination.

Now think of the things which goad man into destroying man: they are hope, envy, hatred, fear and contempt.

People who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power. 

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Our anger and annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us.

If you like doing something, do it regularly; if you don’t like doing something, make a habit of doing something different. The same goes for moral inclinations. When you get angry, you should know that you aren’t guilty of an isolated lapse, you’ve encouraged a trend and thrown fuel on the fire.

If you shall be afraid not because you must some time cease to live, but if you shall fear never to have begun to live according to nature – then you will be a man worthy of the universe that has produced you, and you will cease to be a stranger in your native land.

The love of power or money or luxurious living are not the only things which are guided by popular thinking. We take our cue from people’s thinking even in the way we feel pain.

‘My brother is unfair to me.’ Well then, keep up your side of the relationship; don’t concern yourself with his behaviour, only with what you must do to keep your will in tune with nature.

If you don’t want to be cantankerous, don’t feed your temper, or multiply incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry, then begin to count the days on which you don’t get mad.

Provoked by the sight of a handsome man or a beautiful woman, you will discover within you the contrary power of self-restraint. Faced with pain, you will discover the power of endurance. If you are insulted, you will discover patience. In time, you will grow to be confident that there is not a single impression that you will not have the moral means to tolerate.

Pain too is just a scary mask: look under it and you will see. The body sometimes suffers, but relief is never far behind. And if that isn’t good enough for you, the door stands open; otherwise put up with it. The door needs to stay open whatever the circumstances, with the result that our problems disappear.

The mind maintains its own tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse. But the parts that are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it.

So there is the comforting thing about extremities of pain: if you feel it too much you are bound to stop feeling it.

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.

Blame is not for failure. It is for failing to help or ask for help.

Failure is nothing more than learning how to win.

There’s meaning in every failure. Find it.

It is our own opinions that disturb us. Take away these opinions then, and resolve to dismiss your judgment about an act as if it were something grievous, and your anger is gone.

Why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice?

A man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on another man’s acts.

It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.

When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.

With what are you discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to your mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, immediately turn to yourself and reflect in what manner you yourself have erred: for example, in thinking that money is a good thing or pleasure, or a bit of reputation, and the like.

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.

If they’ve injured you, then they’re the ones who suffer for it. But have they?

I’ve come to realize that all my past failures and frustrations were actually laying the foundation for the understanding that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.

I do what is mine to do; the rest doesn’t disturb me. The rest is inanimate, or has no logos, or it wanders at random and has lost the road.

Let it happen, if it wants, to whatever it can happen to. And what’s affected can complain about it if it wants. It doesn’t hurt me unless I interpret its happening as harmful to me. I can choose not to.

To live in peace, immune to all compulsion. Let them scream whatever they want.

Consider that you also do many things wrong, and that you are a man like others; and even if you do abstain from certain faults, still you have the disposition to commit them, though either through cowardice, or concern about reputation, or some such mean motive, you abstain from such faults.

No time for reading. For controlling your arrogance, yes. For overcoming pain and pleasure, yes. For outgrowing ambition, yes. For not feeling anger at stupid and unpleasant people – even for caring about them – for that, yes.

To be angry at something means you’ve forgotten: That everything that happens is natural. That the responsibility is theirs, not yours.

Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.

How trivial the things we want so passionately are.

Discard your misperceptions. Stop being jerked like a puppet. Limit yourself to the present.

Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.

You’ve got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.

If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. 

With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.