"Whenever you take offense at someone's wrongdoing, immediately turn to your own similar failings, such as seeing money as good, or pleasure, or a little fame - whatever form it takes. By thinking on this, you'll quickly forget your anger, considering also what compels them - for what else could they do? Or, if you are able, remove their compulsion."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.30
"Anything that must be done, virtue can do with courage and promptness. For anyone would call it a sign of foolishness for one to undertake a task with a lazy and begrudging spirit, or to push the body in one direction and the mind in another, to be torn apart by wildly divergent impulses."
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 31.b-32
"No person has the power to to have everything they want, but it is in their power to not want what they don't have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have."
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 123.3
"The founder of the universe, who assigned to us the laws of life, provided that we should live well, but not in luxury. Everything needed for our well-being is right before us, whereas what luxury requires is gathered by many miseries and anxieties. Let us use this gift of nature and count it among the greatest things."
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 119.15b
"Heraclitus would shed tears whenever he went out in public - Democritus laughed. One saw the whole the whole as a parade of miseries, the other of follies. And so, we should take a lighter view of things and bear them with an easy spirit, for it is more human to laugh at life than to lament it."
~ Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 15.2
"I was shipwrecked before I even boarded . . . the journey showed me this - how much of what we have is unnecessary, and how easily we can decide to rid ourselves of these things whenever it's necessary, never suffering the loss."
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 87.1
"Won't you be walking in your predecessors' footsteps? I surely will use the older path, but if I find a shorter and smoother way, I'll blaze a trail there. The ones who pioneered these paths aren't our masters, but our guides. Truth stands open to everyone, it hasn't been monopolized."
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 33.11
