I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
Go on and increase in valor, O boy! this is the path to immortality.
Whatever is well said by another, is mine.
A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.
Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.
What madness it is for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him.
If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh.
The mind is a matter over every kind of fortune; itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.
The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. It is more powerful than external circumstances.
Retire into yourself as much as possible. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.
To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.
What were once vices are the fashion of the day.
Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
Whenever you hold a fellow creature in distress, remember that he is a man.
Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail. Slight thou art, if I can bear thee, short thou art if I cannot bear thee!
So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.
We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.
I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?
Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool.
He is a king who fears nothing, he is a king who desires nothing!