What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.
What a great blessing is a friend with a heart so trusty you may safely bury all your secrets in it.
There is the need for someone against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler, you won’t make the crooked straight.
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.
A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
Everything hangs on one’s thinking.
The place one’s in, though, doesn’t make any contribution to peace of mind: it’s the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself.
What’s the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.
There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.
Behold a contest worthy of a god, a brave man matched in conflict with adversity.
We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.
Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.
A man can refrain from wanting what he has not and cheerfully make the best of a bird in the hand.
For greed, all nature is too little.
You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.
Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature.
We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end to them.
Luck never made a man wise.