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.

Delphic Maxims 20 - 27:

Embrace friendship.
Cling to education.
Pursue honor.
Be eager for wisdom.
Praise the good.
Find fault with no one.
Praise virtue.
Practice what is just.

Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 21

“To live, indeed, is not in our power, but to live rightly is.” Quintus Sextius

Seneca writes of Sextius:

“All our senses ought to be trained to endurance. They are naturally long-suffering, if only the mind desists from weakening them. This should be summoned to give an account of itself every day. Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: ‘What bad habits have you cured today? What fault have you resisted? In what respect are you better?’ ... When the light has been removed from sight, and my wife, long aware of my habit, has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words. I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing.” Seneca, De Ira, III.XXXVI

Here we have another example of the practice of nightly self-examination.

Do you think that someone can consort with things he admires without imitating them? ... The philosopher, by consorting with what is ordered and divine and despite all the slanders around that say otherwise, himself becomes as divine and ordered as a human being can be.

Plato, The Republic, 500cd

If you have an earnest desire of attaining to philosophy, prepare yourself from the very first to be laughed at, to be sneered at by the multitude, to hear them say, “He is returned to us a philosopher all at once," and "Whence this supercilious look?" Now, for your part, don't have a supercilious look indeed; but keep steadily to those things which appear best to you as one appointed by God to this station. For remember that, if you adhere to the same point, those very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you. But if you are conquered by them, you will incur a double ridicule.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 22

What is our course and what is our means of flight?

We should not rely on our feet to get us there, for our feet just take us everywhere on earth, one place after another.

Nor should you saddle up a horse or prepare some sea-going vessel.

You should put aside all such things and stop looking; just shut your eyes, and change your way of looking, and wake up. Everyone has this ability but few use it.

Go into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop 'working on your statue' until the divine splendor of virtue shines in you, until you see 'Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat'.

If you have become this and have seen it and find yourself in a purified state, you have no impediment to becoming one in this way nor do you have something else mixed in with yourself, but you are entirely yourself, true light alone.

If you see that you have become this, at that moment you have become sight, and you can be confident about yourself, and you have at this moment ascended here, no longer in need of someone to show you. Just open your eyes and see, for this alone is the eye that sees the great beauty.

Plotinus, Ennead 1.6.8-9

If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, so as to wish to please anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be contented, then, in everything with being a philosopher; and, if you wish to be thought so likewise by anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 23

He who does an injury is more unhappy than he who receives one.
It is the province of a magnanimous man to bear with mildness the errors of others.

The Golden Sentences of Democrates, 11-12