1 - Whenever you receive any disturbing news, keep this thought ready at hand:The news cannot affect anything that is of your choice. [Epictetus D3.18]

2 - You don’t have to have an opinion about anything. Nothing needs to upset you. [Marcus Aurelius, M6.52]

3 - Respect only yourself, feel confident in your spirit, and order your life as to be ready for good or bad luck. [Seneca, H8]

4 - It is never the case that one person does something wrong and someone else suffers harm. [Epictetus D3.18]

5 - Pay careful attention to what people say. Try your best to understand where they are coming from. [Marcus Aurelius, M6.53]

6 - Let not your confidence be without knowledge and your knowledge without commitment. [Seneca, H8]

7 - Your job is to defend yourself strongly, respectfully, and without anger. [Epictetus D3.18]

8 - What is not good for the beehive is not good for the bee. [Marcus Aurelius, M6.54]

9 - Once you have decided, stand by it and do not erase your principles. [Seneca, H8]

10 - What does someone’s evil have to do with you? [Epictetus D3.18]

11 - If the crew belittle the captain or patients their doctor, then whose authority would they accept? [Marcus Aurelius 6.55]

12 - Let your senses encourage reason to look for the truth and draw its first principles from it. [Seneca, H8]

13 - But whether you are condemned or acquitted is someone else’s business. It is also that person’s evil. [Epictetus D3.18]

14 - Things have no power to force you to have an opinion about them. [Marcus Aurelius, M6.52]

15 - Where agreement and unity are, there must the virtues be. It is the vices that are at war with one another. [Seneca, H8]

16 - Whenever you go astray, if you are so inclined, blame yourself for it. [Epictetus D3.19]

17 - How many came into this world with me! How many of them have already left! [Marcus Aurelius, M6.56]

18 - Even though virtue may give us pleasure, we don’t practice virtue for that reason.Virtue does not give us this but gives us this in addition. [Seneca, H9]

19 - If you remember that nothing except your own judgment can cause you to become disturbed or confused, then I swear to you by all the gods that we’ve made progress. [Epictetus D3.19]

20 - To a person with jaundice, honey tastes bitter.To a person bitten by a mad dog, water looks terrifying. To a child, a ball is a great treasure. Why should I be angry with anyone, then? [Marcus Aurelius, M6.57]

21 - Pleasure is neither the reward for nor the cause of virtue, but it comes with it.We don’t choose virtue for pleasure, but virtue gives pleasure when we choose it. [Seneca, H9]

22 - Even when we are all grown up, we resemble children.After all, it is being a child to be uncultivated in matters of culture, unschooled in matters of literature, and uneducated in matters relating to the art of living. [Epictetus D3.19]

23 - No one can stop you from living according to the laws of your personal nature. Nothing can happen to you against the laws of universal nature. [Marcus Aurelius, M6.58]

24 - Would you like to know what I seek from virtue? Virtue itself. Nothing is better. Virtue is its own reward. [Seneca, H9]

25 - The good and the bad come from ourselves, not from things external to us. [Epictetus D3.20]

26 - People try to please miserable folks.They pursue miserable ends in miserable ways. How quickly time covers everything! How many has it covered already! [Marcus Aurelius, 6.59]

27 - You devote yourself to pleasures, I check them.You indulge in pleasure. I use it.You think it is the highest good. I don’t even think it’s good.You do everything for the sake of pleasure. I do nothing for its sake [Seneca, H10]

28 - If I form the right idea about poverty, or disease, or not holding office, isn’t that enough for me?Will it not help me? How then do you expect me to seek for good any longer in external things?” [Epictetus D3.20]

29 - What is evil? The same thing you have seen before. Remind yourself that you have seen this many times, like you have seen many other things. [Marcus Aurelius, 7.1]

30 - I do not call a person wise who is overcome by anything, let alone pleasure. How can those who are immersed in pleasure guard themselves against toil, danger, want and all the problems that surround and threaten their lives? How will they bear the sight of death or of pain? [Seneca, H11]

31 - But what is the reality? You accept these ideas as far as the door but no one takes them home with them.All at once you are at war with your servants, your neighbours, and those who laugh at you. [Epictetus D3.20]

Notes D = Discourses M = Meditations H = On Happiness

---