When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I am going to deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and unsociable. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions. (Book II, §1)

Remember how long you have been putting off these things, and how often you have received an opportunity from the gods to no avail. You must now at last perceive the nature of that universe of which you are a part, and the nature of that governor of the universe from whom you exist as an effluence. And that a limit of time has been set for you, which if you do not use for clearing away your clouds, it will be gone and you will be gone, and never again will it return. (Book II, §4)

Every hour, then, be determined by the thought: what is this, the thing that is now happening to my soul? I am in every action asking myself: is this something that I am doing? And do I relate it to that which is my own purpose? Am I not a part of the whole? And do I not consent to my being a part of the whole? (Book II, §5)

Remember that all is opinion. For what is said about you by others is nothing to you. And what is said about you by yourself is nothing to you, unless you give it attention. So let your mind be free from passions, and let it be its own master. Let it be just, and let it be ready to accept what happens, and to say what is true. (Book II, §6)

But if you are not able to bear the judgment of others, nor to bear the pain of the body, do not be ashamed; for you are not a stone, but a man. And the best thing is to bear with patience what you cannot change, and to change what you can. (Book II, §7)

Let the first rule be: to keep yourself simple and good, and to be free from pretence, and to be just, and to be kind to others, and to be free from anger, and to be free from envy, and to be free from jealousy, and to be free from all such things. (Book II, §8)

And the second rule: to consider that all things are opinions, and that you have the power to change your opinion. And if you change your opinion, you change the whole world. (Book II, §9)

Think of the whole universe, and of the infinite time, and of the constant change of things. And think of the shortness of your own life, and of the time that is past, and of the time that is to come. And then you will see that all things are nothing, and that you are nothing, and that there is nothing to be afraid of. (Book II, §10)

Finally, remember that the gods are good, and that they have given you all that you need. And that you are not alone, but that you are a part of the whole, and that you are loved by the whole. And that you are free, and that you can choose to be happy. (Book II, §11)