Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford World's Classics)

Scars and bruises are left behind on it, and if one doesn’t erase them completely, it will no longer be bruises that are found there when one receives further blows on that spot, but wounds.

In a word, remember this, that if you attach value to anything at all that lies outside the sphere of choice, you’ve destroyed your choice.

For the ruling centre of a bad man can’t be trusted; it is unstable, and unsure in its judgements, falling under the power of one impression after another.

Where does the good lie? ‘In choice.’ Where does the bad lie? ‘In choice.’ And that which is neither good nor bad? ‘In things that lie outside the sphere of choice.’

each of these names, if carefully considered, indicates the actions that are appropriate to it.

And what advantage does a wrestler gain from his training partner? The greatest. And that man, too, who insults me becomes my training partner; he trains me in patience, in abstaining from anger, in remaining gentle.

we wouldn’t be amazed that a Cynic doesn’t marry or father children. He has the whole human race as his children, man, all the men as sons, all the women as daughters; and it is in that spirit that he approaches them all and tries to take care of them.

‘Since the person in question has injured himself by inflicting some wrong on me, shouldn’t I injure myself by inflicting some wrong on him?

since habit is a powerful force that leads us where it will, when we’ve become accustomed to exercising our desires and aversions in relation to these external things alone, we must set a contrary habit in opposition to that habit, and when impressions are most inclined to make us slip, there we must apply our training as a counteracting force.