Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
Doubt everything. Find your own light.
It is a difficult matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears.
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; that which you do not need is always expensive.
It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.
If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.
Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
While there’s life there’s hope, and only the dead have none.
He who sows the ground with care and diligence acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers.
Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
We know how to speak many falsehoods that resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.
An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.
The present will not long endure.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
There are three attributes for which I am grateful to Fortune: that I was born, first, human and not animal; second, man and not woman; and third, Greek and not barbarian.
Turn yourself not away from three best things: Good Thought, Good Word, and Good Deed.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.
First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
The public has more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.
Bastions of wealth are no deference for the man who treads the grand altar of Justice down and out of sight.
Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.
Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within.
We are but dust and shadow.
Coffee and love taste best when hot.
The best fighter is never angry.
Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.
All is fair in love and war
Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.
No man pleases by silence; many I please by speaking briefly.
Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.
Do not test out your mind on the grounds that you are examining what seductive and impure thoughts look like, imagining that, as you do this, you will not be overcome by them. Even the wise have in this way been thrown into confusion and become infatuated.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
Anger so clouds the mind that it cannot perceive the truth.
Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.
It is better to destroy one’s own errors than those of others.
The wise warrior avoids the battle.
