Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?
We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.
Do not try to seem wise to others.
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to.
Do nothing in a depressed mood, nor as one afflicted, nor as thinking that you are in misery, for no one compels you to that.
From now on practice saying to everything that appears unpleasant: You are merely an appearance and NOT what you appear to be.
Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words.
If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher.
What disturbs and alarms man are not the things, but his opinions and fancies about the things.
Don’t seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.
We ought to flee the friendship of the wicked, and the enmity of the good.
It is better to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled spirit, amid abundance.
Act your part with honor.
If I was a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan. But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God.
The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom. Only the educated are free.
When our friends are present we ought to treat them well; and when they are absent, to speak of them well.
What is it that every man seeks? To be secure, to be happy, to do what he pleases without restraint and without compulsion.
Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?
The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.