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!
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture.
You talk one way, you live another.
Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?
Many things have fallen only to rise higher.
No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.
Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.