Seneca

Order your mind as if you had come to the very end. Postpone nothing. Balance life's account each day. The greatest flaw in life is that it is always imperfect, and part of it is always postponed.

You will outstrip all mortals — and even the gods will hardly stand above you. The difference? Their span is longer. A great artist proves himself by rendering a full likeness within a miniature.

Disasters, losses, and wrongs touch virtue only as a cloud touches the sun. The sun continues to shine; virtue continues to be virtue. The cloud cannot reach what lies above it.

A fighter in the arena can drop his sword and appeal to the crowd. You, however, may neither drop your sword nor plead for your life. Stand upright until you fall. What use is a handful of borrowed days?

The Supreme Good needs no practical help from outside. It is grown at home and arises wholly within itself. The moment it seeks any part of itself from beyond, it falls under Fortune's sway.

None of us pauses to think that one day we must leave this body, our dwelling, behind — just as tenants stay from love of a place. Treat the body as a house you may leave at any hour.

Bravery is not thoughtless rashness, nor love of danger, nor the courting of fearsome things. It is the knowledge which enables us to distinguish between what is truly evil and what is not.

Far more often, we are troubled by our own apprehensions than by anything real. Rumour, that great mocker, can settle wars — yet it settles individuals even more often.

Getting rich has been, for many, not an end of troubles but a change of them. The fault lies in the mind, not in the money. What turned poverty into a load now turns wealth into one too.