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All that goes to make you a good man lies within yourself. And what do you need in order to become good? To wish it.

“But,"you object,”my illness does not allow me to be doing anything; it has withdrawn me from all my duties." It is your body that is hampered by ill-health, and not your soul as well.It is for this reason that it clogs the feet of the runner and will hinder the handiwork of the cobbler or the artisan;but if your soul be habitually in practice, you will plead and teach, listen and learn, investigate and meditate

[…] But when set in the very midst of troubles one should say:
 
Perchance some day the memory of this sorrow
Will even bring delight

[…] But when set in the very midst of troubles one should say:
 
Perchance some day the memory of this sorrow
Will even bring delight

Have you really fallen in love with him that much? I demanded, staring at her with a sinking heart, and hardly aware of what I was asking.

What can I say to you, Vanya? Can’t you see for yourself! He told me to come, and here I am, waiting for him, she said with the same bitter smile. […] Listen, Vanya, even if I do love Alyosha—madly, insanely— perhaps I love you even more, as a friend..

..the only thing is, Vanya—when I look at you, you’re so uncommonly ordinary-looking..

Good heavens! What do you expect him to look like then, Daddy?

No, I didn’t mean that. But it’s your face, Vanya…to me there’s nothing poetic about it…You know, they say poets are a pale-faced lot on the whole—and, well, their hair…there’s something about their eyes too…Take someone like Goethe for instance

“They praise the young man,” she mused, “but why? No one knows. An author, a poet… But what is an author exactly?”

I cannot stop myself constantly recalling the whole of that difficult past year in my life.I want to record everything now,and if I had not devised this occupation for myself I think I’d have died of misery. All those impressions from the past sometimes afflict me painfully,to the point of torment.But once they’ve been written down, they will take on a calmer, more orderly aspect.They will be less of a delirium

I love the sun, especially the setting March sun in St Petersburg on a clear frosty evening. The whole street is suddenly bathed in brilliant light. All the houses glow. For a time, the grey, yellow and dull-green facades lose their drabness; there’s a sense of euphoria, of awakening, as though someone had poked you in the ribs. A new vista, new ideas…

Last year, on the evening of 22nd March, I had a most unusual experience. All day I’d been tramping the city in search of lodgings. The place I was then living in was very damp, and I was already starting to develop a nasty cough. I’d been meaning to move the previous autumn, but ended up putting it off till spring. I couldn’t find anything suitable.

You have been complaining that my letters to you are rather carelessly written. Now who talks carefully unless he also desires to talk affectedly? I prefer that my letters should be just what my conversation would be if you and I were sitting in one another's company or taking walks together, spontaneous and easy; for my letters have nothing strained or artificial about them…

Did you ever see a dog snapping with wide-open jaws at bits of bread or meat which his master tosses to him? Whatever he catches, he straightway swallows whole, and always opens his jaws in the hope of something more. So it is with ourselves; we stand expectant, and whatever Fortune has thrown to us we forthwith bolt, without any real pleasure, and then stand alert and frantic for something else to snatch.

Plato,by taking pains,advanced to old age.To be sure,he was the fortunate possessor of a strong and sound body (his very name was given him because of his broad chest);but his strength was much impaired by sea voyages & desperate adventures.Nevertheless,by frugal living,by setting a limit upon all that rouses the appetites,& by painstaking attention to himself,he reached that advanced age in spite of many hindrances

Sailors have good reason to fear the land. It is hard to believe what I endured when I could not endure myself; you may be sure that the reason why Ulysses was shipwrecked on every possible occasion was not so much because the sea-god was angry with him from his birth; he was simply subject to seasickness. And in the future I also, if I must go anywhere by sea, shall only reach my destination in the twentieth year

Therefore, my dear Lucilius, withdraw yourself as far as possible from these exceptions and objections of so-called philosophers. Frankness, and simplicity beseem true goodness. Even if there were many years left to you, you would have had to spend them frugally in order to have enough for the necessary things; but as it is, when your time is so scant, what madness it is to learn superfluous things!

“He is a slave." Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear. I will name you an ex-consul who is slave to an old hag, a millionaire who is slave to a serving-maid; I will show you youths of the noblest birth in serfdom to pantomime players!
No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed.

Survey men in general;there is none whose life does not look forward to the morrow.What harm is there in this,you ask? Infinite harm;for such persons do not live,but are preparing to live.They postpone everything.Even if we paid strict attention,life would soon get ahead of us;but as we are now,life finds us lingering & passes us by as if it belonged to another,& though it ends on the final day,it perishes every day

But it is one thing to remember, another to know. Remembering is merely safeguarding something entrusted to the memory; knowing, however, means making everything your own; it means not depending upon the copy and not all the time glancing back at the master. Let there be a difference between yourself and your book! How long shall you be a learner? From now on be a teacher as well!

What we have to seek for, then, is that which does not each day pass more and more under the control of some power which cannot be withstood. And what is this? It is the soul, – but the soul that is upright, good, and great. What else could you call such a soul than a god dwelling as a guest in a human body? A soul like this may descend into a Roman knight just as well as into a freedman's son or a slave.

[…] there is only one good, the cause and the support of a happy life, – trust in oneself.
[…] “By so much you are better! Rise, draw a fresh breath, and surmount that hill, if possible, at a single spurt!”

But I have decided to put up with taunts; he may stir my laughter, but I perchance shall stir him to tears; or, if he persist in his jokes, I shall rejoice, so to speak, in the midst of sorrow, because he is blessed with such a merry sort of lunacy. But that kind of merriment does not last long. Observe such men, and you will note that within a short space of time they laugh to excess and rage to excess.

Says one: "There were thirty tyrants surrounding Socrates, and yet they could not break his spirit"; but what does it matter how many masters a man has? "Slavery" has no plural; and he who has scorned it is free, – no matter amid how large a mob of over-lords he stands.

Within our own time there was a certain rich man named Calvisius Sabinus; he had the bank-account and the brains of a freedman. I never saw a man whose good fortune was a greater offence against propriety. His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam, – names which we know as well as we know those of our own attendants.

[…] Your greatest difficulty is with yourself; for you are your own stumbling-block. You do not know what you want. You are better at approving the right course than at following it out. You see where the true happiness lies, but you have not the courage to attain it…

[…] No man is born rich. Every man, when he first sees light, is commanded to be content with milk and rags. Such is our beginning, and yet kingdoms are all too small for us!

Change the age in which you live, and you have too much. But in every age, what is enough remains the same.

The old Romans had a custom which survived even into my lifetime.They would add to the opening words of a letter:If you are well,it is well;I also am well.Persons like us would do well to say:If you are studying philosophy,it is well.For this is just what "being well" means.Without philosophy the mind is sickly,&the body,too,though it may be very powerful,is strong only as that of a madman or a lunatic is strong

[…] Moreover, no one is so old that it would be improper for him to hope for another day of existence. And one day, mind you, is a stage on life's journey.

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

Greetings from Seneca to his friend Lucilius.
 
Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius – set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words, – that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach.