If you have been placed in a position above others, are you automatically going to behave like a despot? Remember who you are and whom you govern – that they are kinsmen, brothers by nature, fellow descendants of Zeus.

‘Well, what will my profession in the community be?’ Whatever position you are equipped to fill, so long as you preserve the man of trust and integrity.

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.

Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.

To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind himself.

Have I done something for the common good? Then I share in the benefits. To stay centered on that. Not to give up.

The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.

Life is warfare… Then what can guide us? Only philosophy.

No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now.

The first thing a pretender to philosophy must do is get rid of their presuppositions; a person is not going to undertake to learn anything that they think they already know.

“It’s unfortunate that this has happened”. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it — not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it.

Take a good hard look at people’s ruling principle, especially of the wise, what they run away from and what they seek out.

People who are physically ill are unhappy with a doctor who doesn’t give them advice, because they think he has given up on them. Shouldn’t we feel the same towards a philosopher – and assume that he has given up hope of our ever becoming rational – if he will no longer tell us what we need (but may not like) to hear?

Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.

My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application – not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech – and learn them so well that words become works.

The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not draw me aside into pomposity. 

It stares you in the face. No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now.

This, then, is the beginning of philosophy – an awareness of one’s own mental fitness.

This presumption that you possess knowledge of any use has to be dropped before you approach philosophy – just as if we were enrolling in a school of music or mathematics.

Reflect on the other social roles you play. If you are a council member, consider what a council member should do. If you are young, what does being young mean, if you are old, what does age imply, if you are a father, what does fatherhood entail? Each of our titles, when reflected upon, suggests the acts appropriate to it.

What then can guide a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daimon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy.

If you commit to philosophy, be prepared at once to be laughed at and made the butt of many snide remarks.

My city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome; but so far as I am a man, it is the world.

Do you want to know if you are educated? Show us your values, philosopher.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Everything popular is wrong.

What you seek is seeking you.

Observe all men, thyself most.

“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Like madness is the glory of life.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the floud, leads on to fortune ommitted, all the voyage of their lives are bound in shallows and in miseries.

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triump die, like fire and powder Which, as they kiss, consume.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”

“God shall be my hope, my stay, my guide and lantern to my feet.”

“All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

I have set my life upon a cast, And I will stand the hazard of the die.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus. Now I am dead, Now I am fled, My soul is in the sky. Tongue, lose thy light. Moon take thy flight. Now die, die, die, die.

Silence is the perfectest herault of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified.

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.

Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.