Stoic Wisdom

"Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion... I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any evil; to content myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is incidental to great wealth."

"Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived"

"Of Fronto, to how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called , i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection."

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

"He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts."

"We are all made for mutual assistance, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids, as the rows of the upper and under teeth, from whence it follows that clashing and opposition is perfectly unnatural."

"Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence."

"This that I am, whatever it be, is mere flesh and a little breathe and the ruling Reason"

"This Being of mine, whatever it really is, consists of a little flesh, a little breath, and the part which governs."

"A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all – that is myself."

"What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it."

"All that is from the gods is full of Providence."

"There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return."

"Yes, you can--if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable."

"You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last."