If you want to make progress, put up with being thought foolish and silly with regard to external things, and don’t even wish to give the impression of knowing anything about them; and if some people come to think that you’re somebody of note, regard yourself with distrust.

Epictetus, The Handbook 13

May one of you show himself to be such a person, so that I can say, 'Enter, young man, into what is your own, for you are destined to become an adornment to philosophy; yours are these goods, yours these books, yours these discourses.' And then, when he has laboured in this fine field of study and proved his mastery, let him come back to me and say, 'I want indeed to be free from passion and disturbance of mind, but I also want, as a pious person, a philosopher, and a diligent student, to know what my duty is towards the gods, towards my parents, towards my brother, towards my country, and towards strangers.' Pass on now to the second field of study; for that too is yours. ...

No, one hears nothing like that, but rather, 'I want to know what Chrysippus has to say in his treatise about 'the Liar.’’ Why don't you go off and hang yourself, you wretch, if that is really what you want? And what good will it do you to know it? You'll read the whole book from one end to the other while grieving all the while, and you'll be trembling when you expound it to others.

Epictetus, Discourses 2.17

Hence it is that things which in some fashion have fallen away from their good are at the same stroke deprived of participation of unity; and in like manner things which have lost their portion in unity, being infected with division, are deprived of their good. Goodness, then, is unification, and unification goodness; the Good is one, and the One is primal good.

Proclus, Elements of Theology 13

The courageous man is not only he who conquers his enemies, but also he who conquers his pleasures. Some men are masters of cities but slaves of women.

Democritus, Ethical Fragments 287

Beyond all bodies is the soul's essence; beyond all souls, the intellective principle; and beyond all intellective substances, the One.

For every body is moved by something not itself: self-movement is contrary to its nature, but by communication in soul it is moved from within, and because of soul it has life. ...

Soul again, being moved by itself, has a rank inferior to the unmoved principle which is unmoved even in its activity. ... Now Intelligence is such an unmoved cause of motion, eternally active without change. ...

Yet again, the One is prior to Intelligence. For the Intelligence, though unmoved, is yet not unity: in knowing itself, it is object to its own activity.

Proclus, Elements of Theology 20

The intellect of the Father made a crashing noise, understanding, with unwearied counsel, omniform ideas. But with winged speed they leaped forth from one fountain: for both the counsel and the end were from the Father. In consequence too of being allotted an intellectual fire, they are divided into other intellectual forms: for the king previously placed in the multiform world, an intellectual incorruptible impression, the vestige of which hastening through the world, causes the world to appear invested with form, and replete with all-various ideas, of which there is one fountain. From this fountain other immense distributed ideas rush with a crashing noise, bursting forth about the bodies of the world, and are bourne along its terrible bosoms, like swarms of bees. They turn themselves too on all sides, and nearly in all directions. They are intellectual conceptions from the paternal fountain, plucking abundantly the flower of the fire of sleepless time. But a self-perfect fountain pours forth primogenial ideas from the primary vigour of the Father.

Chaldean Oracles fragment 37

When you relax your attention for a short while, don't imagine that you'll be able to recover it whenever you please, but bear this in mind, that because of the error that you've committed today, your affairs will necessarily proceed far worse in every respect. For to begin with, and most seriously of all, a habit of inattention will grow up in you, and then a habit of deferring any effort to pay attention. ...

And is there anything whatever in life that is done better by those who remain inattentive? ...

Don't you realize that when you've let your mind roam free, it is no longer in your power to call it back, either to decorum, or to self-respect, or to good order? But instead you do everything that comes into your head; you follow your impulses.

[Give your attention to] those general principles that you should always have at hand, so as not to go to sleep, or get up, or drink or eat, or converse with others, without them, namely, that no one is master over another person's choice, and that it is in choice alone that our good and evil lie. ...

'But I haven't pleased So-and-so.' - Is he an action of mine, then; is he a judgment of mine? - 'No' - Then why should I trouble myself any longer? - 'But he passes for being a man of some importance.' - Let him look to that, and those who think him so, but I for my part have someone whom I must please, whom I must submit to, whom I must obey, namely, God, and after him, myself.

Epictetus, Discourses 4.12

Having a daily routine of devotion and contemplation in accordance with the principles of this tradition can immediately make a huge positive difference in your life. Do not get so bogged down in the technicalities of metaphysics or concerns about perfect historical accuracy that you do little or nothing. Get started now.

A good place to start if you are unsure is with a simple prayer (you can find many examples in this channel) & incense along with meditation on the Golden Verses or The Handbook (Enchiridion) of Epictetus.

So we'd be right if we said that wickedness is discord and sickness of the soul. Well then, suppose something that's in motion aims at a target and tries to hit it, but on every try passes by it and misses. Are we going to say that it does this because it's properly proportioned or because it's out of proportion? But we know that no soul is willingly ignorant of anything. But ignorance occurs precisely when a soul tries for the truth but swerves aside from understanding and so is beside itself. So we have to take it that an ignorant soul is ugly and out of proportion.

Plato, Sophist 228b-d

Gold-helmeted, strong Ares, chariot-mounted,
Hard in your will, hand, shield, and spear; bronze-armored,
Staunch city saver, bulwark of Olympus,
Father of Victory, helper of Themis,
Tyrant to enemies, leader of good men,
King over manliness! Your fiery globe whirls
Among the seven planets' tracks, your horses
Blazing forever over the third orbit.
Hear me, ally of mortals, maker of fine youth;
Rain gently from on high into my being
Brightness and martial strength. Let me have power
To shake out of my head the bitter panic,
Defeating with my mind my soul's false impulse,
And yet keep down the temper that provokes me
Toward icy strife. But, blessed god, give courage -
The kind that lives in peace among the mild laws,
Away from combat and death's savage demons.

Homeric Hymn To Ares

Illustration of Queen Dido of Carthage preparing a ritual sacrifice to goddess Juno, 400 CE.

@collispalatinus

Everything you do and say and think should be predicated on the possibility of your imminent departure from life. But, if the gods exist, leaving this world can’t be something to fear, because they wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11

But it is necessary that the rational soul should be immortal, because it knows the gods; for nothing mortal knows that which is immortal.

Sallust, On the Gods and the World Chapter VIII

That the most proper mode of venerating this great principle of principles [The One] is to extend in silence the ineffable parturitions of the soul to its ineffable co-sensation; and that if it be at all lawful to celebrate it, it is to be celebrated as a thrice unknown darkness, as the God of all Gods, and the unity of all unities, as more ineffable than all silence, and more occult than all essence, as holy among the holies, and concealed in its first progeny, the intelligible Gods.

Thomas Taylor, The Theology of the Greeks

To desire the impossible is the mark of a slave and a fool; it is the behavior of one who is a stranger in the world, and is fighting against God through the only means that is available to him, through his own judgments.

Epictetus, Discourses 3.24

Surely anyone with any sense at all will always call upon a god before setting out on any venture, whatever its importance.

Plato, Timaeus, 27c

The Gods are not some sort of supernatural mafia that will whack us unless we pay them off for protection via sacrifices and offerings. This is a common view, but it is wrong.

A man becomes like God when he becomes just and pious, with understanding.

Plato, Theaetetus 176b

"Every pleasure or pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together. It makes the soul corporeal, so that it believes that truth is what the body says it is. As it shares the beliefs and delights of the body, I think it inevitably comes to share its ways and manner of life and is unable ever to reach Hades in a pure state; it is always full of body when it departs, so that it soon falls back into another body and grows with it as if it had been sewn into it."

Plato, Phaedo 83d

The contemplative philosopher knows sensible things insofar as he reduces them from their own plurality to the unity of the intelligible; but since in the intelligible there is not only unity but also plurality, he reduces the unity in the intelligible to the unity that is in God, which is unity proper without multiplicity, for God is nothing but a monad without multiplicity.

Olympiodorus, Commentary on the Phaedo 4.3.7-10

As for sex, you should stay pure before marriage as far as you can, but if you have to indulge, do only what is lawful. However, do not be angry with those who do indulge, or criticise them, and do not boast of the fact that you do not yourself indulge.

If you are told that someone is saying bad things about you, do not defend yourself against what is said, but answer, ‘Obviously this person is ignorant of my other faults, otherwise they would not have mentioned only these ones.’

Epictetus, The Handbook, 33