Book 9 - 42-2

And what harm have you suffered? You will find that none of these who excite your anger has done anything capable of affecting your mind for the worse: and its only in your mind that damage or harm can be done to you - they have no other existence.

BOOK 9 - 42

Whenever you are offended at someone at someone's lack of shame, you should immediately ask yourself: 'So is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?' It is not possible. Do not then ask for the impossible. This person is just one of the shameless inevitably existing in the world. Have the same thought ready for the rogue, the traitor, every sort of offender. The recognition that this class of people must necessarily exist will immediately make you kinder to them as individuals. Another useful thought of direct application is the particular virtue nature has given us to counter a particular wrong. Gentleness is given as the antidote to cruelty, and other qualities to meet other offenses. In general, you can always re-educate one who lost his way: and anyone who does wrong has missed his proper aim and gone astray.

BOOK 9 -41

Epicurus says: 'In my illness my conversations were not about the sufferings of my poor body, and I did not prattle on to my visitors in this vein, but I continued to discuss the cardinal principles of natural philosophy, with particular reference to this very point, how the mind shares in such disturbances of the flesh while still preserving its calm and pursuing its own good.' He goes on: 'I did not allow the doctors either to preen themselves on any great achievement, but my life continued fine and proper.' An example, then, for you in sickness, if you are sick, and in any other circumstance. All schools agree that you should not abandon philosophy in any eventualities of life, nor join the ignorant chatter of the uneducated layman. Concentrate only on the work of the moment, and the instrument you use for doing it.

BOOK 9 -40-2

But you might say: 'The gods have put these things in my own power.' Is it not better to use your own power in freedom rather than show a servile and supine concern for what you cannot control? And who told you that the gods do not help us even to the ends which lie within your own power ? At any rate, pray abut these things, and you will see. One man prays: 'How can I sleep with that woman?' Your prayer is: 'How can I lose the desire to sleep with her?' Another prays: 'How can I be rid of that man?'  You pray: How can I stop wanting to be rid of him? Another: 'how can I save my little child?' You: 'How can I learn not to fear his loss?' And so on. Give all your prayers this turn, and observe what happens.              

BOOK 9 -40

Either the gods have power or they do not. Now, if they have no power, why pray? If they do have power why not pray for their gift of freedom from all worldly fear, desire, or regret, rather than for the presence or absence of this or that? Certainly, if the gods can cooperate with men, they can cooperate to those ends.

BOOK 9 -39

Either all things flow from our intelligent source and supervene as in one coordinated body, so the part should not complain at what happens in the interest of the whole - or all is atoms, and nothing more than present stew and future dispersal. Why then are you troubled? Say to your directing mind: "Are you dead, are you decayed, have you turned into an animal, are you pretending, are you herding with the rest and sharing their feed?

BOOK 9 -38

If he did wrong, the harm is to himself. But perhaps he did not do wrong.

BOOK 9 -37

Enough of this miserable way of life, enough of grumbling and aping! Why are you troubled? What is new in this? What is it that drives you mad? The cause? Then face it. Or rather the material? Then face that. Apart from cause and material there is nothing. But you should even now, late though it is, see to your relation to the gods also: make yourself simpler, and better. Three years is as good as a hundred in this quest.

BOOK 9 -36

The rotting of the base material of everything. Water, dust, bones, stench. Again: marble is a mere deposit in the earth, gold and silver mere sediments; your clothing is animal hair, your purple is fish blood; and so on with everything else. And the vital spirit is just the same, changing from this to that.

BOOK 9 -35

Loss is nothing more than change. Universal nature delights in change, and all that flows from nature happens for the good. Similar things have happened from time to time everlasting, and there will be more such to eternity. So why do you say that everything has always happened for the bad and always will, that all those gods between them have evidently never found any power to right this, so the world is condemned to the grip of perpetual misery?

BOOK 9 -34

What are the directing minds of these people? What are they set on, what governs their likes and values? Train yourself to look at their souls naked. When they think that their blame will hurt or praise advantage, what conceit that is!

BOOK 9 -33

All that you see will soon perish; those who witness this perishing will soon perish themselves. Die in extreme old age or die before your time - it will all be the same.

BOOK 9 -32

You can strip away many unnecessary troubles which lie wholly in your own judgement. And you will immediately make large and wide room for yourself by grasping the whole universe in your thought, contemplating the eternity of time, and reflecting on the rapid change of each thing in every part - how brief the gap from birth to dissolution, how vast the gulf of time before your birth, and an equal infinity after your dissolution.

BOOK 9 -31

Calm acceptance of what comes from a cause outside yourself, and justice in all activities of your own causation. In other words, impulse and action fulfilled in that social conduct which is an expression of your own nature.

BOOK 9- 30

Take a view from above - Look at the thousands of flocks and herds, the thousands of human ceremonies, every sort of voyage in storm or calm, the range of creation, combination, and extinction. Consider too, the lives once lived by others long before you, the lives that will be lived after you, the lives lived now among foreign tribes; and how many have never even heard your name, how many will very soon forget it, how many may praise you now but quickly turn to blame. Reflect that neither memory nor fame, nor anything else at all, has any importance worth thinking of.

BOOK 9 -29

The universal cause is a torrent, sweeping everything in its stream. So, a man, what does that mean for you? Do what nature requires at this moment. Start straight away, if that is in your power: don't look over your shoulder to see if people will know. Don't hope for Plato's utopian republic, but be content with the smallest step forward, and regard even that result as no mean achievement. How worthless are these men in the public eye who think their actions have anything to do with philosophy! They are full of snot. And who will change their views? Without a change of view what alternative is there to slavery - men groaning and going through the motions of compliance? Go on, then, talk to me now of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. I shall follow them, if they saw the will of universal nature and took themselves to her school. But if they simply strutted a dramatic role, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not seduce me to pompous pride.

BOOK 9 -28

The recurrent cycles of the universe are the same, up and down, from eternity to eternity. And either the mind of the whole has a specific impulse for each individual case - if so , you should welcome the result - or it had a single original impulse, from which all else follows in consequence: and why should you be anxious about that? The Whole is either a good - then all is well: or if purposeless - some sort of random arrangement of atoms or molecules - you should not be without purpose yourself.

In a moment the earth will cover us all. Then the earth too will change, and further successive changes to infinity. One reflecting on these waves of change and transformation, and the speed of their flow, will hold all mortal things in contempt.

BOOK 9 -27

When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort  of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you. But you should still be kind to them. They are by nature your friends, and the gods too help them in various ways - dreams and divination - at least to the objects of their concern.

BOOK 9- 26

You have endured unnumerable trouble by not leaving your directing mind to do the work it was made for. But enough.

BOOK 9 -25

Go straight to the qualifying cause and examine it separately from the material element. Then establish the maximum time for which this individual thing thus qualified can by its nature subsist.