A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: 1. Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; 2. Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; 3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; 4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; 5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; 6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.
Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.
The traitor rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness.
It is better to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled spirit, amid abundance.
He who fears death has already lost the life he covets.
Fortify yourself with contentment for this is an impregnable fortress.
The secret to happiness isn’t gaining more but learning to enjoy less.
Freedom is the power to live as we choose.
Give heed to the appearance of neighbourhoods, a flourishing country should show its prosperity.
Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; that which you do not need is always expensive.
No man is free who is not master of himself.
Whoever then would be free, let him wish for nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.
No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.
If someone speaks badly of you, do not defend yourself against the accusations, but reply; you obviously don’t know about my other vices otherwise you would have mentioned these as well.
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.
Demand not that things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.
Anger so clouds the mind that it cannot perceive the truth.
Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
Where a man is against his will, there his is imprisoned. Desire things to happen exactly as they happen and you will always be free.
An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.
The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.
Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men’s desires, but by the removal of desire.
Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which we live, we should therefore be content.
The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others.
We are bound by the law, so that we may be free.
Give me by all means the shorter and nobler life, instead of one that is longer but of less account!
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
The hero saves us. Praise the hero! Now, who will save us from the hero?
We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.
God has entrusted me with myself. No man is free who is not master of himself. A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
Politicians are not born; they are excreted.
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.
