Favorite quotes and thoughts on "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "Enchiridion" by Epictetus, and Stoic philosophy in general

"The body and it's parts are a river, the soul a dream and a mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion"

"Many lumps of incense on the same alter. One crumbles now, one later, but it makes no difference."

"A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse"- Epictetus

" Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone."

"In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.
To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint.
Like an olive that ripens and falls.
Praising it's mother, thanking the tree it grew on."

"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."

"Those who are well constituted in the body endure both heat and cold: and so those who are well constituted in the soul endure both anger and grief and excessive joy ..." Epictetus

"Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love- something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid.
Perceptions like that- latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That's what we need to do all the time- all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust- to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them.
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." - Marcus Aurelius

Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure. The same thing happens to other people, and they weather it unharmed- out of sheer obliviousness or because they want to display "character".
Is wisdom really so much weaker than ignorance and vanity?