Aedan

“Spinoza is not to be read, he is to be studied; you must approach him as you would approach Euclid, recognizing that in these brief two hundred pages a man has written down his lifetime's thought with stoic sculptury of everything superfluous.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“For I am not everlasting, but a human being, a part of the whole as an hour is a part of the day. Like an hour I must come, and like an hour pass away.”
― Epictetus, Discourses, Fragments, Handbook

“But my nose is running!' What do you have hands for, idiot, if not to wipe it? 'But how is it right that there be running noses in the first place?' Instead of thinking up protests, wouldn't it be easier just to wipe your nose?”
― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness