BOOK 7 - 63

'No soul', says' Plato, 'likes to be robbed of truth' - and the same holds of justice, moderation, kindness, and all such virtues. Essential that you should keep this constantly in your mind: this will make you more gentle.

BOOK 7 -61

All the time you should consider who are these people whose endorsements you wish, and what are the minds that direct them. When you look into the sources of their judgement and impulse, you will not blame their unwitting error, not will you feel the need of their endorsement.

BOOK 7 -61

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that it stands ready for what comes and is not thrown by the unforeseen.

BOOK 7 -60

The body, too, should stay firmly composed, and not fling itself about either in motion or at rest. Just as the mind displays qualities in the face, keeping it intelligent and attractive, something similar should be required of the whole body. But all this should be secured without making an obvious point of it.

BOOK 7 - 59

Dig inside yourself. Inside there is a spring of goodness ready to gush at any moment, just kepping digging.

BOOK 7 -58

In every contingency keep in your mind's eye those who had the same experience before, and reacted with vexation, disbelief, or complaint. So where are they now? Nowhere. Well then, do you want to act like them? Why not leave the moods and shifts of others to the shifting and the shifted, and for yourself concentrate wholly on how to make use of these contingencies? You will then use them well, and they will be raw material in your hands. Only take care, and seek your own best good in all that you do. Remember, these two things: the action is important, the context indifferent.

BOOK 7 -57

Love what falls your way and is fated for you. What could suit you more than that?

BOOK 7 - 56

Imagine you are now dead, or had not lived before this moment. Now view the rest of your life as a bonus, and live it as nature directs.

BOOK 7 - 55

Do not look around at the directing minds of other people, but keep looking straight ahead to where nature is leading you - both universal nature, in what happens to you, and your own nature, in what you must do yourself. Every creature must do what follows from its constitution. The rest of creation is constituted to serve rational beings (just as in everything else the lower exists for the higher), but rational beings are here to serve each other. So the main principle in man's constitution is the social. The second is resistance  to the promptings of the flesh. It is the specific property of rational and intelligent activity to isolate itself and never be influenced by the activity of the senses or impulses: both these are of the animal order, and it is the aim of intelligent activity to be sovereign over them and never yield them mastery - and rightly so, as it is the very nature of intelligence to put all these things to its own use. The third element in a rational constitution is a judgement unhurried and undeceived. So let your directing mind hold fast to these principles and follow the straight road ahead; then it has what belongs to it.

BOOK 7 -54

Everywhere and all the time it is up to you to honor god in contentment with your present circumstance, to treat the men who are your present company with justice, and to lavish thought on every present impression in your mind, so that nothing slips in past your understanding.

BOOK 7 -53

Where a task can be accomplished in accordance with the reason which gods and men share, there is nothing to be afraid of: because where there is the possibility of benefit from an action which moves along the proper path, following our own human constitution, there should be no lurking fear of harm.

BOOK 7 -52

'Better at throwing his man': but not more public-spirited, or more decent, or more disciplined to circumstance, or more tolerant of neighbors' faults.

BOOK 7 -51

Again:

'With special food or drink. or sorcery,
Seeking a channel from the stream of death.'

'The wind that blows from god
we must endure, and labour uncomplaining.'

BOOK 7 -50

Again: 
'What is born of earth goes back to earth,
but the growth from heavenly seed
returns whence it came, to heaven.'

Or else this: a dissolution of the nexus of atoms, and senseless molecules dispersed.

BOOK 7 -49

Look back over the past - all those many changes of dynasties. And you can foresee the future too: it will be completely alike, incapable of deviating from the present. So far the study of human life forty years are as good as ten thousand: what more will you see?

BOOK 7 -48

Further, when your talk is about mankind, view earthly things as if looking down on them from some point high above - flocks, armies, weddings, divorces, births, death, the hubbub of the law-courts, desert places, various foreign nations, festivals, funerals, markets, all the medley of the world and the ordered conjunction of opposites.

BOOK 7 -47

Observe the mouvement of the stars as if you were running courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground.

BOOK 7 - 46

'But, my dear fellow, consider it possible that nobility and virtue are something other than saving one's life or having it saved. Could it not be that anyone who is truly a man should dismiss any concern for a particular length of life, and not simply live for the sake of living? Rather he should leave all this to god and believe what the womenfolk say, that no one ever escapes the day of his fate: his thought should be on this further question, how best to live his life in the time he has to be alive.'

BOOK 7 -45

'The truth of the matter, my fellow Athenians is this. Whatever a position a man has taken up in his own  judgment, or is assigned by his commander, there, it seems to me, he should stay and face the danger, giving no thought to death or anything else before dishonor.'

BOOK 7 -44

'But I could give this man a proper answer. I would say: "You are mistaken, my friend, if you think tha a man of any worth at all should take into account the risk of life or death, and not have as his sole consideration in any action whether he is doing right or wrong".'

BOOK 7 - 43

'Don't join in mourning, or in ecstasy'

BOOK 7 -42

'For good and right stand on my side.'

BOOK 7 - 41

'If I and my two sons are now no more the gods' concern, this too will have its cause.'

BOOK 7 -40

'Ripe ears of corn are reaped, and so are our lives: One stands, another falls.'

BOOK 7 -39

'May you give joy to the immortal gods, and us.'

BOOK 7 -38

Mere things, brute facts, should not provoke your rage: They have no mind to care.

BOOK 7 -37

It is shameful that the face should be so obedient, shaping, and ordering its expressions as the mind dictates, when the mind cannot impose its own shape and order on its self.

BOOK 7 -36

'A king's lot: to do good and be damned.'