Here's a few quotes I've found from reading Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. I found Marcus Aurelius to be especially inspiring because he chose to lead a simple life despite his status as emperor. His path to stoicism was certainly by choice, not necessity. In the same way, I may not be impressed by someone following a mustachian lifestyle while poor (who thus has no choice) yet I may marvel at someone who can maintain those same mustachian principles while possessing great wealth.
From The Golden Sayings of Epictetus:
I am richer than you: I am not racked with anxiety as to what Cæsar may think of me; I flatter none on that account. This is what I have, instead of vessels of gold and silver! your vessels may be of gold, but your reason, your principles, your accepted views, your inclinations, your desires are of earthenware.
From the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius:
Consider the nature of all worldly sensible things; of those especially, which either ensnare by pleasure, or for their irksomeness are dreadful, or for their outward lustre and show are in great esteem and request, how vile and contemptible, how base and corruptible, how destitute of all true life and being they are.
How base and putrid, every common matter is! Water, dust, and from the mixture of these bones, and all that loathsome stuff that our bodies do consist of: so subject to be infected, and corrupted. And again those other things that are so much prized and admired, as marble stones, what are they, but as it were the kernels of the earth— gold and silver, what are they, but as the more gross faeces of the earth— Thy most royal apparel, for matter, it is but as it were the hair of a silly sheep, and for colour, the very blood of a shell-fish; of this nature are all other things.
