Marcus Aurelius: “How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in…”

In the application of thy principles thou must be like the pancratiast, not like the gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he uses and is killed; but the other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else than use it.

Do not then consider life a thing of any value. + For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space.

One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.

But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul, such as he showed in the illness of Maximus.