You will do the greatest service to the state if you shall raise, not the roofs of the houses, but the souls of the citizens: for it is better that great souls should dwell in small houses rather than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses.
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
You have been given your own work to do. Get to it right now, do your best at it, and don’t be concerned with who is watching you. Create your own merit.
Unremarkable lives are marked by the fear of not looking capable when trying something new.
If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.
Focus not on what he or she does, but on keeping to your higher purpose. Your own purpose should seek harmony with nature itself. For this is the true road to freedom.
If you have anything better to be doing when death overtakes you, get to work on that.
A half-hearted spirit has no power. Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Average people enter into their endeavors headlong and without care.
In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it.
A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.
Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.
The beginning of philosophy is the recognition of the conflict between opinions.
Do not so much be ashamed of that disgrace which proceeds from men’s opinion as fly from that which comes from the truth.
It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.
Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure.
Pleasure, like a kind of bait, is thrown before everything which is really bad, and easily allures greedy souls to the hook of perdition.
Don’t regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours.
We should not have either a blunt knife or a freedom of speech which is ill-managed.
When one maintains his proper attitude in life, he does not long after externals.
As it is pleasant to see the sea from the land, so it is pleasant for him who has escaped from troubles to think of them.
The Beginning of Philosophy is a Consciousness of your own Weakness and inability in necessary things.