A room without books is like a body without a soul.
I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.
A man of faith is also full of courage.
He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent.
In banquets remember that you entertain two guests, body and soul: and whatever you shall have given to the body you soon eject: but what you shall have given to the soul, you keep always.
Don’t live by your own rules, but in harmony with nature.
You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to.
You will do the greatest services 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 than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses.
For while we are enclosed in these confinements of the body, we perform as a kind of duty the heavy task of necessity; for the soul from heaven has been cast down from its dwelling on high and sunk, as it were, into the earth, a place just the opposite to godlike nature and eternity. But I believe that the immortal gods have sown souls in human bodies so there might exist beings to guard the world and after contemplating the order of heaven, might imitate it by their moderation and steadfastness in life.
The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.
He who exercises wisdom, exercises the knowledge which is about God.
The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another’s heart.
If you would cure anger, do not feed it. Say to yourself: ‘I used to be angry every day; then every other day; now only every third or fourth day.’ When you reach thirty days offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods.
The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.
The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.
Ah, yes, superstition: it would appear to be cowardice in face of the supernatural.
It has been ordained that there be summer and winter, abundance and dearth, virtue and vice, and all such opposites for the harmony of the whole, and (Zeus) has given each of us a body, property, and companions.
The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.
All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.
Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.
There is but one way to tranquillity of mind and happiness, and that is to account no external things thine own, but to commit all to God.
At feasts, remember that you are entertaining two guests, body and soul. What you give to the body, you presently lose; what you give to the soul, you keep for ever.
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
Those who are well constituted in the body endure both heat and cold: and so those who are well constituted in the soul endure both anger and grief and excessive joy and the other affects.
Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.
Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God.
Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.
Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.
Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.
To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.
The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honorable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labors to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul.
The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.
