The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

We can choose to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be troubled by it; for things themselves have no power of their own to affect our judgments.

Why are you angry with your slave, with your master, with your patron, with your client? Wait a little. Behold, death comes, which will make you equals. Seneca, On Anger 3.43.1

Nothing is heavy if we take it lightly; nothing need provoke anger if one does not add one’s anger to it.

Two things we must therefore root out: fear of distress in the future and the memory of distress in the past. The one concerns me no longer. The other concerns me not yet.

If we felt the headache before getting drunk, we would be careful not to drink to excess. But pleasure, to deceive us, walks in front and hides its train.

He who has need of riches feels fear on their account. But no man enjoys a blessing that brings anxiety. He is always trying to add a little more. While he puzzles over increasing his wealth, he forgets how to use it.

No longer be concerned with what the world says about you, but with how you talk to yourself. Montaigne,

The perfection of moral character consists in this: to spend each day as if it were the last, to be neither agitated nor numb, and not to pretend.

The measure of what is necessary is what is useful.

Becoming alternately merchants and merchandise by turns, we ask not what a thing truly is, but what it costs.