Source identified
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
Retaliation is rejected when it would reproduce the very behavior one condemns.
Source note: Meditations 6.6; wording varies by translation.
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“It is above all things necessary to form a true estimate of oneself.”
A realistic estimate of one’s abilities and limits supports both confidence and humility, reducing the instability that comes from either self-contempt or exaggerated self-belief.
Source note: Of Peace of Mind, section VI; the passage begins Seneca’s practical advice about matching undertakings to one’s actual powers and disposition.
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“Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, “I have been harmed.””
The statement asks whether part of suffering is sustained by the story attached to an event rather than by the event alone.
Source note: Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.
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“The mind is its own place.”
Voice: Poetic speaker · Satan
The statement emphasizes how mental framing can alter the experience of circumstances, for good or ill.
Source note: Paradise Lost, Book I; the fuller sentence continues with heaven and hell as states the mind can make.
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“Wish the things which happen to be as they are.”
The advice is not passivity; it is a call to stop fighting reality before deciding how to respond to it.
Source note: A concise clause from Enchiridion 8, where Epictetus contrasts demanding preferred outcomes with accepting what occurs.
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“The universe is transformation: life is opinion.”
Change is treated as the condition of the world, while our experience of life is shaped by judgment.
Source note: Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.