Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee!
Good men seek it by the natural means of the virtues; evil men, however, try to achieve the same goal by a variety of concupiscences, and that is surely an unnatural way of seeking the good. Don’t you agree?
In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.
You know when you have found your prince because you not only have a smile on your face but in your heart as well. Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart. Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.
Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home.
All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.
One’s virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.
Inconsistency is my very essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top.
Love binds people too, in matrimony’s sacred bonds where chaste lovers are met, and friends cement their trust and friendship. How happy is mankind, if the love that orders the stars above rules, too, in your hearts.
Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.
He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.
Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.
As far as possible, join faith to reason.
Among wise men there is no place at all left for hatred. For no one except the greatest of fools would hate good men. And there is no reason at all for hating the bad. For just as weakness is a disease of the body, so wickedness is a disease of the mind. And if this is so, since we think of people who are sick in body as deserving sympathy rather than hatred, much more so do they deserve pity rather than blame who suffer an evil more severe than any physical illness.
We cannot raise the question: How can there be evil if God exists? without raising the second: How can there be good if He exists not?
There is no danger: he is suffering from drowsiness, that disease which attacks so many minds which have been deceived.
Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with her hand, and said: ‘There is no danger; these are the symptoms of lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me. And that he may do so, let me now wipe his eyes that are clouded with a mist of mortal things.
And there is no reason at all for hating the bad. For just as weakness is a disease of the body, so wickedness is a disease of the mind.
Verily this is the very crown of my misfortunes, that men’s opinions for the most part look not to real merit, but to the event; and only recognise foresight where Fortune has crowned the issue with her approval.
And even if the praise is deserved, it cannot add anything to the philosopher’s feelings: he measures happiness not by popularity, but by the true voice of his own conscience.