I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.
While we teach, we learn.
It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
No wind blows in favor of a ship without direction.
While we are postponing, life speeds by.
You want to live-but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying-and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?
The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.
The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
Greed’s worst point is its ingratitude.
Prudence and love cannot be mixed; you can end love, but never moderate it.
Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.
There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.
Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.
He who has great power should use it lightly.
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
There’s one blessing only, the source and cornerstone of beatitude: confidence in self.
Where fear is, happiness is not.