Get a daily dose of Stoic thought from one of my favorite philosophers, Marcus Aurelius. If you like the quote you receive, you can email it to a friend. This small project is based in Python 3.6 and offered practice with basic File I/O and several Standard Library modules including MIMETEXT, SMTPLIB, SSL, and TEXTWRAP. Also getting more acquain…

get_dose_of_marcus.py

import random
import smtplib
import ssl
import sys
import textwrap
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from datetime import datetime

def main():
    print_header()
    run_event_loop()

def print_header():
    print("--------------------------------------------------------------")
    print("              DAILY DOSE OF MARCUS AURELIUS")
    print("--------------------------------------------------------------")

def run_event_loop():
    """Main menu for user to fetch a quote or quit program"""
    cmd = "EMPTY"
    while cmd != "0":
        print("""
            What would you like to do?

            'f' - fetch a random stoic quote
            'q' - quit\n""")

        cmd = input("            Enter choice: ")
        print()
        # quit program
        if cmd.lower() == "q":
            print("            Have a nice day!")
            break
        # display quote
        elif cmd.lower() == "f":
            quote = get_meditation("meditations.txt")
            wrapper = textwrap.wrap(quote, width=50)
            for line in wrapper:
                print(textwrap.indent(line, "     "))

            # give user option to email quote
            email = input("\n     Email this quote " \
                          "to a friend? <'y' or 'n'> ")
            print()
            if email.lower() == "y":
                try:
                    subject = quote[:30] + "..."
                    send_gmail(quote, subject)
                    print()
                    print("     Your email was sent!", file=sys.stderr) # stderr prints in red font
                except Exception:
                    print()
                    print("     Sorry, there was a problem sending email.",
                          file=sys.stderr)
                    
        # display error message
        else:
            print("     Try again. You did not enter a valid choice.",
                  file=sys.stderr)

def get_meditation(filename):
    """Randomly select a meditation from meditations txt file"""
    random.seed(datetime.now())
    with open(filename, encoding="utf8") as f:
        contents = f.readlines()
    meditation = random.choice(contents)
    return meditation

def send_gmail(quote, subject):
    """Send a random meditation over gmail to desired recipient"""
    sender = input("     Enter your Gmail address: ")
    password = input("     Enter your Gmail password: ")
    receiver = input("     Enter TO email address: ")

    msg = MIMEText(quote)
    msg["Subject"] = subject
    msg["From"] = sender
    msg["To"] = receiver

    context = ssl.create_default_context()
    with smtplib.SMTP_SSL("smtp.gmail.com", 465, context=context) as s:
        s.login(sender, password)
        s.sendmail(sender, receiver, msg.as_string())

        
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

meditations.txt

The speed with which all of them vanish--the objects in the world, and the memory of them in time. And the real nature of the things our senses experience, especially those that entice us with pleasure or frighten us with pain or are loudly trumpeted with pride. To understand those things--how idiotic, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are--that’s what our intellectual powers are for.
What can guide us? Only Philosophy. Which means making sure that the power within stays safe and free from assault, superior to pleasure and pain, doing nothing randomly or dishonestly and with imposture, not dependent on anyone else’s doing something or not doing it. And making sure that it accepts what happens and what is dealt as coming from the same place it came from.
Hippocrates cured many illnesses--and then fell ill and died. The Chaldeans predicted the deaths of many others; in due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar--who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so many thousand foot and horse in battle--they too departed this life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire. But it was moisture that carried him off. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin, Socrates by the human kind. And? You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time to disembark.
You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once and truthfully that you are thinking about this or that. And it would be obvious at once from your answer that your thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones--the thoughts of an unselfish person, one unconcerned with pleasure and with sensual indulgence generally, with squabbling, with slander and envy, or anything else you’d be ashamed to be caught thinking.
Stand straight--not straightened.
How to act: never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings. Don’t gussy up your thoughts. No surplus of words or unnecessary actions. Cheerfully. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others.
Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it. Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small--small as the corner of earth in which we live. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.
Is it your reputation that’s bothering you? Look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us--how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space--and most of it uninhabited.
Things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within--from our own perceptions. Everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen.
Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what if faces --to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it--and makes it burn still brighter.
It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you--inside or out.
The tranquility that comes when you stop caring about what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.
If you seek tranquility, do less. Or more accurately do what’s essential. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. It you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”
Don’t be disturbed. Uncomplicate yourself. Someone has done wrong…to himself. Something happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present--thoughtfully, justly.
Unrestrained moderation.
The age of Vespasian, for example. People doing the exact same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die, complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office and power. And that life they led is nowhere to be found. Or the age of Trajan. The exact same things. And that life too--gone. Survey the records of other eras. And see how many others gave their all and soon died and decomposed into the elements that formed them. But most of all, run through the list of those you knew yourself. Those who worked in vain, who failed to do what they should have--what they should have remained fixed on and found satisfaction in.
The world as a living being--one nature, one soul. Keep that in mind. And how everything feeds into that single experience, moves with a single motion. And how everything helps produce everything else. Spun and woven together.
Time is a violent river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.
Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die “tomorrow” or “the day after.” Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was--what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.
To pass through this life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.
A trite but effective tactic against the fear of death: think of the list of people who had to be pried away from life. What did they gain by dying old? In the end, they all sleep six feet under--Caedicianus, Fabius, Julian, Lepidus, and all the rest. They buried their contemporaries, and were buried in turn. Our lifetime is so brief. And to live it out in these circumstances, among these people, in this body? Nothing to get excited about. Consider the abyss of time past, the infinite future. Three days of life or three generations: what’s the difference?
Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human, however imperfectly, and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked upon.
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.
People are our proper action. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become like sun, wind, animals--irrelevant to us. Our actions our impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone--those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us--a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.
Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.
Soon you'll be ashes, or bones. A mere name, at most--and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial. Dogs snarling at each other. Quarreling children--laughing and then bursting into tears a moment later.
Two characteristics shared by gods and men (and every rational creature): 1. Not to let others hold you back. 2. To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that.
Not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just to do what you can and should.
Pride is a master of deception: when you think you're occupied in the weightiest business, that's when he has you in his spell.
Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity.
What is it in ourselves that we should prize? Not just transpiration (even plants do that). Or respiration (even beasts and wild animals breathe). Or being struck by passing thoughts. Or jerked like a puppet by your own impulses. Or moving in herds. Or eating, and relieving yourself afterwards. Then what is to be prized? An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues. Which is what all public praise amounts to. So we throw out other peoples' recognition. What's left for us to prize? I think it's this: to do what we were designed for.
To be admired by posterity--people they've never met and never will--that's what people set their hearts on. You might as well be upset at not being a hero to your great-grandfather.
Not to assume it's impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it's humanely possible, you can do it too.
Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.
Your responsibilities can be broken down into individual parts. Concentrate on those, and finish the job methodically--without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger.
Take Antoninus as your model, always. His energy in doing what was rational…his steadiness in any situation…his sense of reverence…his calm expression…his gentleness…his modesty…his eagerness to grasp things. And how he never let things go before he was sure he had examined them thoroughly, understood them perfectly…the way he put up with unfair criticism, without returning it…how he couldn't be hurried…how he wouldn't listen to informers…how reliable he was as a judge of character, and of actions…not prone to backbiting, or cowardice, or jealousy, or empty rhetoric…content with the basics…how hard he worked, how much he put up with…his constancy and reliability as a friend…his tolerance of people who questioned his views and his delight at seeing his ideas improved on…his piety--without a trace of superstition.
Asia and Europe: distant recesses of the universe. The ocean: a drop of water. Mount Athos: a molehill. The present: a split second in eternity. Miniscule, transitory, insignificant.
Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are one.
You take things you don't control and define them as "good" or "bad." And so of course when the "bad" things happen, or the "good" ones don't, you blame the gods and feel hatred for the people responsible, or those you decide to make responsible. Much of our bad behavior stems from trying to apply those criteria. If we limited "good" and "bad" to our own actions, we'd have no call to challenge god, or to treat other people as enemies.
Keep this constantly in mind: that all sorts of people have died--all professions, all nationalities. Follow the thought all the way down to Philistion, Phoebus, and Origanion. Now extend it to other species. We have to go there too, where all of them have already gone: the eloquent and the wise--Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates…the heroes of old, the soldiers and kings who followed them….Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes…the smart, the generous, the hardworking, the cunning and selfish…and even Menippus and his cohorts, who laughed at the whole brief, fragile business.
When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one's energy, that one's modesty, another's generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we're practically showered with them. It's good to keep this in mind.
Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.
You don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you. Things can't shape our decisions by themselves.
Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.
Pointless bustling of processions, opera arias, herds of sheep and cattle, military exercises. A bone flung to pet poodles, a little food in the fish tank. The miserable servitude of ants, scampering of frightened mice, puppets jerked on strings. Surrounded as we are by all of this, we need to practice acceptance. Without disdain. But remembering that our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.
So many who were remembered already forgotten, and those who remembered them long gone.
Frightened with change? But what can exist without it? What's closer to nature's heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can't you see? It's just the same with you--and just as vital to nature.
To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it if you simply recognize: that they're human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you'll both be dead before long. And above all, that they haven't really hurt you. They haven't diminished your ability to chose.
Treat what you don't have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you'd crave them if you didn't have them. But be careful. Don't feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them, that it would upset you to lose them.
To watch the courses of the stars as if you revolved with them. To keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.
Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: to accept this event with humility, to treat this person as he should be treated, to approach this thought with care so that nothing irrational creeps in.
Dig deep. The water--goodness--is down there. And as long as you keep digging, it will keep bubbling up.
For times when you feel pain, see that it doesn't disgrace you, or degrade your intelligence--doesn't keep it from acting rationally or unselfishly. And in most cases what Epicurus said should help: that pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don't magnify them in your imagination.
Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense.
Alexander and Caesar and Pompey. Compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates? The philosophers knew the what, they why, the how. Their minds were their own. The others? Nothing but anxiety and enslavement.
You can hold your breath until you turn blue, but they'll still go on doing it.
Ask: what is this, fundamentally? What is its nature and substance, its reason for being? What is it doing in the world? How long is it here for?
Apply them constantly, to everything that happens: Physics. Ethics. Logic.
They all die soon--praiser and praised, rememberer and remembered. Remembered in these parts or in a corner of them. Even there they don't all agree with each other or even with themselves. And the whole earth a mere point in space.
To erase false perceptions, tell yourself: I have it in me to keep my soul from evil, lust, and all confusion. To see things as they are and treat them as they deserve.
To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference.
We have various abilities, present in all rational creatures as in the nature of rationality itself. And this is one of them. Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it--turns it to its purposes, incorporates it into itself--so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal.
Stop perceiving the pain you imagine and you'll remain completely unaffected.
Give yourself a gift: the present moment. People out of posthumous fame forget that the generations to come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say x about you, or think y?
External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase now. If the problem is something in your own character, who's stopping you from setting your mind straight? And if it's that you're not doing something you think you should be, why not just do it? "But there are insuperable obstacles." Then it's not a problem. The cause of your inaction lies outside you. "But how can I go on living with that undone?" Then depart, with a good conscience, as if you'd done it, embracing the obstacles too.
Nothing but what you get from first impressions. That someone has insulted you, for instance. That--but not that it's done you any harm. The fact that my son is sick--that I can see. But "that he might die of it," no. Stick with first impressions. Don't extrapolate. And nothing can happen to you. Or extrapolate. From a knowledge of a ll that can happen in the world.
The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in your path? Then go around them. That's all you need to know. Nothing more. Don't demand to know why such things exist. Anyone who understands the world will laugh at you, just as a carpenter would if you seemed shocked at finding sawdust in his workshop, or a shoemaker at scraps of leather left over from his work. 
No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your words. No imprecision in your thoughts. No retreating into your own soul, or trying to escape it. No overactivity.
A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained. To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring. How? By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Through patience, honesty, humility.
Fear of death is fear of what we may experience. Nothing at all, or something quite new. But if we experience nothing, we can experience nothing bad. And if our experience changes, then our existence will change with it--change, but not cease.
An arrow has one motion and the mind another. Even when pausing, even when weighing conclusions, the mind is moving forward, toward its goal.
Don't look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like all other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us.
Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things you'll leave behind you, and the kind of people you'll no longer be mixed up with.
To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice--it degrades you. And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.
Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance, now, at this very moment, of all external events. That's all you need.
Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my perceptions--not outside.
Everything in flux. And you too will alter in the whirl and perish, and the world as well.
Leave other people's mistakes where they lie.
When we cease from activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion, it's a kind of death. And it doesn't harm us. Think about your life: childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every transformation a kind of dying. Was that so terrible? Think about life with your grandfather, your mother, your adopted father. Realize how many other deaths and transformations and endings there have been and ask yourself: was that so terrible? Then neither will the close of your life be--its ending and transformation.
Identify its purpose--what makes it what it is--and examine that. (Ignore its concrete form.) Then calculate the length of time that such a thing was meant to last.
The world's cycles never change--up and down, from age to age. Either the world's intelligence wills each thing (if so, accept its will), or it exercised that will once--once and for all--and all else follows as a consequence (and if so, why worry?).
Indifference to external events. And a commitment to justice in your own acts. Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good. What you were born to do.
You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind--things that exist only there--and clear out space for yourself:…by comprehending the scale of the world…by contemplating infinite time…by thinking of the speed with which things change--each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows.
Either all things spring from one intelligent source and form a single body (and the part should accept the actions of the whole) or there are only atoms, joining and splitting forever, and nothing else. So why feel anxiety?
Either the gods have power or they don't. If they don't, why pray? If they do, then why not pray for something else instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to feel fear. Or desire, or grief. If the gods can do anything, they can surely do that for us.
Epithets for yourself: Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Disinterested. Try not to forfeit these for others. And if you should forfeit them, set about getting them back. Keep in mind "sanity" means understanding things--each individual thing--for what they are. And not losing the thread. And "cooperation" means accepting what nature assigns you--accepting it willingly. And "disinterest" means that the intelligence should rise above the movements of the flesh--the rough and smooth alike. Should rise above fame, above death, and everything like them. If you maintain your claim to these epithets--without caring if others apply them to you or not--you'll become a new person, living a new life.
How they all change into one another--acquire the ability to see that. Apply it constantly; use it to train yourself. Nothing is as conducive to spiritual growth.
Why all the guesswork? you can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right.
To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.
Continual awareness of all time and space, of the size and life span of the things around us. A grape seed in infinite space. A half twist of a corkscrew against eternity.
Bear in mind that everything that exists is already fraying at the edges, and in transition, subject to fragmentation and to rot. Or that everything was born to die.
To bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again--the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging. Produce them in your mind, as you know them from experience or from history: the court of Hadrian, of Antoninus. The courts of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All just the same. Only the people different.
Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?
If you've immersed yourself in the principles of truth, the briefest, most random reminder is enough to dispel all fear and pain. "…leaves that the wind drives earthward; such are the generations of men." All of these spring up in springtime--and the wind blows them all away. And the tree puts forth others to replace them.
Characteristics of the rational soul: Self-perception, self-examination, and the power to make of itself whatever it wants. It surveys the world and the empty space around it, and the way it's put together. It delves into the endlessness of time to extend its grasp and comprehension of the periodic births and rebirths that the world goes through. It knows that those who come after us will see nothing different, that those who came before us saw no more than we do, and that anyone with forty year behind him and eyes in his head has seen both past and future--both alike.
Tragedies remind us of what can happen, and that it happens inevitably--and if something gives you pleasure on that stage, it shouldn't cause you anger on this one.
No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now.
The soul as a sphere in equilibrium. Not grasping at things beyond it or retreating inward. Not fragmenting outward, not sinking back on itself, but ablaze with light and looking at the truth, without and within.
The despicable phoniness of people who say, "Look, I'm going to level with you here." What does that mean? It shouldn't even need to be said. It should be obvious--written in block letters on your forehead. It should be audible in your voice, visible in your eyes, like a lover who looks into your face and takes in the whole story at a glance. False straightforwardness is like a knife in the back.
To live a good life. We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.
Why is it so hard when things go against you? If it's imposed by nature, accept it gladly and stop fighting it. And if not, work out what your own nature requires, and aim at that, even if it brings you no glory. None of us is forbidden to pursue our own good.
That you don't know for sure it is a mistake. A lot of things are means to some other end. You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people's actions with real understanding.
When you lose your temper, or even feel irritated: that human life is very short. Before long all of us will be laid out side by side.
Kindness is invincible, provided it's sincere--not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight--if you have the change--correcting him cheerfully at the exact moment that he's trying to do you harm. Don't do it sardonically or meanly, but affectionately--with no hatred in your heart. And not ex cathedra or to impress third parties, but speaking directly. Even if there are other people around.
Along with not getting angry at others, try not to pander either. Both are forms of selfishness; both of them will do you harm. When you start to lose your temper, remember: there's nothing manly about rage. It's courtesy and kindness that define a human being--and a man. That's who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners. To react like that brings you closer to impassivity--and so to strength.
For the mind to complain about anything that happens is to desert its post.
The advice from Epicurean writings: to think continually of one of the men of old who lived a virtuous life.
Grapes. Unripe…ripened…then raisins. Constant transition. Not the "not" but the "not yet."
We need to master the art of acquiescence. We need to pay attention to our impulses, making sure they don't go unmoderated, that they benefit others, that they're worthy of us. We need to steer clear of desire in any form and not try to avoid what's beyond our control.
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. If a god appeared to us--or a wise human being, even--and prohibited us from concealing our thoughts or imagining anything without immediately shouting it out, we wouldn't make it through a single day. That's how much we value other people's opinions--instead of our own.
To see the causes of things stripped bare. The aim of actions. Pain. Pleasure. Death. Fame. Who is responsible for our own restlessness. That no one obstructs us. That it's all in how you perceive it.
The foolishness of people who are surprised by anything that happens. Like travelers amazed at foreign customs.
Fatal necessity and inescapable order. Or benevolent providence. Or confusion, random and undirected. If it's inescapable necessity, why resist it? If it's providence, and admits of being worshipped, then try to be worth of god's aid. If it's confusion and anarchy, then be grateful that on this raging sea you have a mind to guide you.
At all times, look at the thing itself--the thing behind the appearance--and unpack it by analysis; cause, substance, purpose, and the length of time it exists.
Everything's destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish. So that new things can be born. It's all in how you perceive it. You're in control. You can dispense with misperception at will, like rounding the point. Serenity, total calm, safe anchorage.
Constantly run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever. And ask: where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend. Think of all the examples: Fabius Catullinus in the country, Lusius Lupus in the orchard, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius on Capri, Velius Rufus…obsession and arrogance. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.
Salvation: to see each thing for what it is--its nature and its purpose; to do only what is right, say only what is true, without holding back.
The fraction of infinity, of that vast abyss of time, allotted to each of us. Absorbed in an instant into eternity. The fraction of all substance, and all spirit. The fraction of the whole earth you crawl about on. Keep all that in mind, and don't treat anything as important except doing what your nature demands and accepting what Nature sends you.
You've lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred--what's the difference? The laws make no distinction. And to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in--why is that so terrible? Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor. "But I've only gotten through three acts…!" Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace--the same grace shown to you.