If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 13

"One day, at dawn, he started thinking about some problem or other; he just stood outside, trying to figure it out. He couldn’t resolve it, but he wouldn’t give up. He simply stood there, glued to the same spot. By midday, many soldiers had seen him, and, quite mystified, they told everyone that Socrates had been standing there all day, thinking about something. He was still there when evening came, and after dinner some Ionians moved their bedding outside, where it was cooler and more comfortable (all this took place in the summer), but mainly in order to watch if Socrates was going to stay out there all night. And so he did; he stood on the very same spot until dawn! He only left next morning, when the sun came out, and he made his prayers to the new day."

Plato, Symposium 220c-d

Here as well as in Hesiod etc we have an account of prayers being made at dawn. I included the context because it’s amusing.

If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends to live for ever, you are stupid; for you wish to be in control of things which you cannot. ... But, if you wish to have your desires undisappointed, this is in your own control. Exercise, therefore, what is in your control.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 14

The perfection of the soul will correct the depravity of the body; but the strength of the body without reasoning does not render the soul better.

The Golden Sentences of Democrates

But for the young man, still
In glorious prime, it is all beautiful:
Alive, he draws men’s eyes and women’s hearts;
Felled in the front line, he is lovely yet.
Let every man then, feet set firm apart,
Bite on his lip and stand against the foe.
But Heracles unvanquished sowed your stock:
Take heart! Zeus bows not yet beneath the yoke.
Fear not the throng of men, turn not to flight,
But straight toward the front line bear your shields,
Despising life and welcoming the dark
Contingencies of death like shafts of sun.

Tyrtaeus

Since we are supposed to greet each day with prayer, an excellent Golden Verse to start the day:

“Never begin to set your hand to any work, until you have first prayed the gods to accomplish what you are going to begin.” Golden Verses of Pythagoras, 48

My friend, there are two patterns set up in reality. One is divine and supremely happy; the other has nothing of God in it, and is the pattern of the deepest unhappiness. This truth the evildoer does not see; blinded by folly and utter lack of understanding, he fails to perceive that the effect of his unjust practices is to make him grow more and more like the one, and less and less like the other. For this he pays the penalty of living the life that corresponds to the pattern he is coming to resemble. And if we tell him that unless he is delivered from this ‘ability’ of his, when he dies the place that is pure of all evil will not receive him; that he will forever go on living in this world a life after his own likeness - a bad man tied to bad company; he will but think, ‘This is the way fools talk to a clever rascal like me.’

Plato, Theaetetus, 176e - 177a

Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought around to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation. Does it pass by you? Don't stop it. Is it not yet come? Don't stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. Do this with regard to children, to a wife, to public posts, to riches, and you will eventually be a worthy partner of the feasts of the gods. And if you don't even take the things which are set before you, but are able even to reject them, then you will not only be a partner at the feasts of the gods, but also of their empire. For, by doing this, Diogenes, Heraclitus and others like them, deservedly became, and were called, divine.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 15

But be careful this does not become a self-absorbed attempt to avoid pain. The focus is, and should always be, on imitation of the divine so that we can thereby aid divinity in demiurgic Ordering of the cosmos.

What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which becomes but never is?

Plato, Timaeus, 27d

It is not the particular situation that distresses you but your own judgment about it.

(Cf. Epictetus, The Handbook, 16)

Sex and food are the two most magnetic desirables in human (animal) life.

But “every pleasure or pain provides another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together” (Plato, Phaedo, 83d).

This is not to say that sex and food are bad (they aren’t), but that you should never be overtaken by desire for them.

Do not watch porn. Do not have hookups. Do not eat junk food. Do not eat more than you need to eat.

Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it. If short, of a short one; if long, of a long one. If it is his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to act well the character assigned you; to choose it is another's.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 17

Some gods are cosmic, and some gods are hypercosmic.

Cosmic gods make (or maintain) the cosmos.
Some make the world be.
Some animate the world.
Some harmonize the world.
Some maintain the world.

Since there are four classes of cosmic god, and since for each of these classes there is a beginning, a middle, and an end, there must be twelve cosmic gods.

Makers of the world: Zeus, Poseidon, Hephaestus.
Animators of the world: Demeter, Hera, Artemis.
Harmonizers of the world: Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes.
Watchers or maintainers of the world: Hestia, Athena, Ares.

Hypercosmic gods create essence, mind, or soul.

See Sallust's On the Gods and the World, VI.

But to me all omens are lucky, if I will. For whichever of these things happens, it is in my control to derive advantage from it.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 18
(Part of an ongoing series of Neoplatonic introductory materials used historically.)

From body to Body; from soul to Soul; from intellect to Intellect; from life to Life; from being to Being; from the One.

You may be unconquerable, if you enter into no combat in which it is not in your own control to conquer.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 19

Our intention in pursuing these mysteries is no other than by logical energies of our reason to arrive at the simple intellection of beings, and by these to excite the divine one resident in the depths of our essence, or rather which presides over our essence, that we may perceive the simple and incomprehensible One. For after, through discursive energies and intellections, we have properly denied of the first principle all conditions peculiar to beings, there will be some danger, lest, deceived by imagination after numerous negations, we should think that we have arrived either at nothing, or at something slender and vain, indeterminate, formless, and confused; unless we are careful in proportion as we advance in negations to excite by a certain amatorial affection the divine vigor of our unity; trusting that by this means we may enjoy divine unity, when we have dismissed the motion of reason and the multiplicity of intelligence, and tend through unity alone to The One itself, and through love to the supreme and ineffable Good.

Proclus, Commentary on the Parmenides

Remember, that it is not he who gives ill language or a blow who insults, but the principle which represents these things. When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 20

The above quote from Proclus contains a key insight:

Though it is not possible to truly comprehend the One - which is the ultimate causal principle of everything, including divinity and the material cosmos - you can approach it by using the technique of negation. By determining what it cannot be, you can begin to glimpse what it is.