Life is a gift of the immortal Gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.
This is the reason we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will.
Leisure without literature is death, or rather the burial of a living man -Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura.
Chance makes a plaything of a man’s life.
Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain.
He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.
If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.
Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.
Those whom fortune has never favored are more joyful than those whom she has deserted.
If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him. Ignoranti quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est.
What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.
Nature ever provides for her own exigencies.
Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation...
Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.
Never to wrong others takes one a long way towards peace of mind.
Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.
True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.
Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.
No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.
The first proof of a well-ordered mind is to be able to pause and linger within itself.