Delphi Classics Ltd

IT is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, re- member that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man

Therefore when the tyrant threatens and calls me, I say, Whom do you threaten? If he says, I will put you in chains, I say, You threaten my hands and my feet. If he says, I will cut off your head, I reply, You threaten my head. If he says, I will throw you into prison, I say, You threaten the whole of this poor body. If he threatens me with banishment, I say the same. Does he then not threaten you at all? If I feel that all these things do not concern me, he does not threaten me at all; but if I fear any of them, it is I whom he threatens

How we should struggle against appearances

Let any of you show me a human soul ready to think as God does, and not to blame either God or man, ready not to be disappointed about any thing, not to consider himself damaged by any thing, not to be angry, not to be envious, not to be jealous; and why should I not say it direct? desirous from a man to become a god

Show me a man who is sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him: I desire, by the gods, to see a Stoic. You cannot show me one fashioned so; but show me at least one who is forming, who has shown a tendency to be a Stoic

Practise, man, if you are irritable, to endure if you are abused, not to be vexed

The world is as it is made,” — he went on, regarding me fixedly— “It is moved by the lowest and pettiest motives, — it works for the most trivial, ridiculous and perishable aims. It is not a paradise. It is not a happy family of united and affectionate brethren. It is an over-populated colony of jabbering and quarrelsome monkeys