To live a life of virtue, you have to become consistent, even when it isn’t convenient, comfortable, or easy.
No man is able to make progress when he is wavering between opposite things.
Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men.
Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them.
Give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths.
It’s so simple really: If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you start something, finish it.
We can’t control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.
Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power and should not be at all your concerns.
What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.
Law intends indeed to do service to human life, but it is not able when men do not choose to accept her services; for it is only in those who are obedient to her that she displays her special virtue.
Contentment comes not so much from great wealth as from few wants.
Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.
You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.
The flourishing life cannot be achieved until we moderate our desires and see how superficial and fleeting they are.
Be careful whom you associate with. It is human to imitate the habits of those with whom we interact. We inadvertently adopt their interests, their opinions, their values, and their habit of interpreting events.
Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions.
Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.
Men are not worried by things, but by their ideas about things. When we meet with difficulties, become anxious or troubled, let us not blame others, but rather ourselves. That is: our ideas about things.
He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid.
Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.