The Mellow Californian to the rescue! Thanks - I needed that!

How about too:

"For Thou alone mankind with quiet peace canst bless; because ‘tis Mars Armipotent that rules the bloody tumults of the war, and He by everlasting pains of love bound fast, tastes in Thy lap most sweet repose, turns back his smooth long neck, and views thy charms, and greedily sucks love at both his eyes. Supinely as he rests his very soul hangs on thy lips; this God dissolv’d in ease, in the soft moments when thy heavenly limbs cling round him, melting with eloquence caress, great Goddess, and implore a peace for Rome. For neither can I write with cheerful strains, in times so sad, nor can the noble House of Memmius desert the common good in such distress of things."

Okay, now it's a challenge

Letter to Menoikeus, DL, X: 127: Remember that what will be is not completely within our control nor completely outside our control, so that we will not completely expect it to happen nor be completely disappointed if it does not happen.

More!

Here's a passage that's always been one of my favorites, from the opening of Book 3, this time from the Rolfe Humphries translation, which I will always hear in my mind in the voice of Charlton Griffin, from the Audible.com reading of the poem:

If you would like to know

What a man really is, the time to learn

Comes when he stands in danger or in doubt.

That's when the words of truth come from his heart,

The mask is torn aside, reality

Remains for all to see. But avarice

And blind desire for honors urge men on

To trespass on the areas which the law

Forbids them, and they struggle night and day

As criminal accomplices to win

Toward heights of wealth - such vital wounds as these

Are aggravated by the fear of death.

Men seem to think that bitter poverty

And the contempt a low position brings

Are far from sweet and reassuring life,

Are hangers-on around the doors of death.

So a false panic harries them; they long

Too late for flight, for far-off distances;

Seek, through the blood of fellow-citizens,

A way to prosper; they amass estates

In avarice, pile one murder on another,

Rejoice when a brother dies, and hate and fear

The table of a kindly relative.

In the same way compulsive envy, born

Of the same fear, can make them waste away

Seeing a man blest with renown or power

Before their very eyes, while they are held,

Or so they mutter, in darkness and in muck.

Some die for lack of statues or a name;

It goes so far, sometimes, that fear of death

Induces hate of life and light, and men

Are so depressed that they destroy themselves

Having forgotten that this very fear

Was the first source and cause of all their woe.

As children tremble and fear everything

In the dark shadows, we, in the full light,

Fear things that really are not one bit more awful

That what poor babies shudder at in darkness,

The horrors they imagine to be coming.

Our terrors and our darknesses of mind

Must be dispelled then, not by sunshine's rays, -

Not by those shining arrows of the light,

But by insight into nature, and a scheme

of systematic contemplation.

This could be a good be a really good thread to keep on hand. I am going to take the liberty to rename it for easier finding in the future. Thanks to Godfrey for starting it!

This is what I had added earlier to the "Announcements" thread:

On days when the everyday pressures of life seem extreme, it's a particularly good time to remember Vatican Saying 78: "The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship; of these, the one is a mortal good, the other immortal."