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This final strategy is about Stoic determinism: the wise man who views the world rationally is never surprised by anything in life.
With meats and drinks and magic spells To turn aside the stream and hold death at bay.1
The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.
Every era of history teaches us the same lesson: nothing lasts forever.
The wise and good enjoy life, without a doubt, but nevertheless are unafraid of dying.
Indeed, to learn how to die is to unlearn how to be a slave.
Today a drop of semen, tomorrow a pile of ash or bones. Not eternal, but mortal; a part of the whole, as an hour is of the day. Like an hour I must come and like an hour pass away.
the mind of the wise man is itself like a heavenly sphere radiating the purest sunlight.
It neither overreaches itself, mingling with external things, nor shrinks away from them.
Its light spreads evenly over the world around it. Complete in itself, smooth and round, bright and shining. Nothing clings to its surface and no harm can touch it.
The duration of a man’s life is merely a small point in time;
His soul is a restless vortex, good fortune is uncertain and fame is unreliable; in a word, as a rushing stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as vapor, are all those that belong to the soul.
Life is warfare and a sojourn in a foreign land.
Our reputation after life is nothing but ...
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why should it be feared by any man? Is this not according to Nature? But nothing that is according to Nature can be evil.
My eyes have grown so feeble, surrounded by darkness on every side. I won’t live to see another sunrise. It doesn’t matter.
