Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall meet with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.

People seek retreats in the country, by the sea, in the mountains — but you can retire into yourself whenever you choose.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things.

-- Epictetus

We suffer not from events but from our judgments about them.

-- Epictetus

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.

-- Seneca

It is not I who conform to the stars; the stars conform to me.

-- Plotinus

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

-- Hypatia

Others are others, I am I — regardless, I walk the path I walk.

-- Kitarō Nishida