Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.

Have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm?

‘But I get to wear a crown of gold.’ If you have your heart set on wearing crowns, why not make one out of roses – you will look even more elegant in that.

Who exactly are these people that you want to be admired by? Aren’t they the same people you are in the habit of calling crazy? And is this your life ambition, then – to win the approval of lunatics?

Consider what men are when they are eating, sleeping, coupling, evacuating, and so forth. Then what kind of men they are when they are imperious and arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated place.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks. 

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.

Do little, if you want contentment of mind.

Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.

To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice.

If something does not make a person worse in himself, neither does it make his life worse, nor does it harm him without or within.

Death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful – and hence neither good nor bad.

A rock is thrown in the air. It loses nothing by coming down, gained nothing by going up.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

The present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose something he does not already possess.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

Don’t believe your situation is genuinely bad – no one can make you do that. Is there smoke in the house? If it’s not suffocating, I will stay indoors; if it proves too much, I’ll leave. Always remember – the door is open.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

Someone bathes in haste; don’t say he bathes badly, but in haste. Someone drinks a lot of wine; don’t say he drinks badly, but a lot. Until you know their reasons, how do you know that their actions are vicious?

Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in your power. Take away then, when you choose, your opinion, and like a mariner who has rounded the headland, you will find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.

The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.

The flaw which is hidden is deemed greater than it is.

Glory paid to our ashes comes too late.

The universe is transformation: life is opinion. 

A vine cannot behave olively, nor an olive tree vinely – it is impossible, inconceivable. No more can a human being wholly efface his native disposition.

Since the greatest part of what we say and do is unnecessary, dispensing with such activities affords a man more leisure and less uneasiness.

To have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more will you see?

Passions stem from frustrated desire.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Whatever man you meet with, immediately say to yourself: “What opinions has this man about good and bad?”

To the rational animal the same act is at once according to nature and according to reason.

Poverty’s no evil to anyone unless he kicks against it.

Take care that you don’t treat inhumanity as it treats human beings.

A person’s worth is measured by the worth of what he values.

An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.

Don’t go through life, grow through life.

The mind in itself has no needs, except for those it creates itself. Is undisturbed, except for its own disturbances. Knows no obstructions, except those from within.

Death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure — all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

A thing is neither better nor worse for having been praised.

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good, just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were always saying this, whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my color.

Your three components: body, breath, mind. Two are yours in trust; to the third alone you have clear title.

No one objects to what is useful to him. To be of use to others is natural. Then don’t object to what is useful to you – being of use.

When I see that one thing [virtue] is supreme and most important, I cannot say that something else is, just to make you happy.

A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner – and my accuser is my sparring partner. He trains me in patience, civility and even temper.

Either you’re going to be depressed when your wish is not realized or foolishly pleased with yourself if it is, overjoyed for the wrong reasons.

I say that virtue is more valuable than wealth to the same degree that eyes are more valuable than fingernails.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.