"I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding."

"There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men."

"We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need."

"You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity."

"If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires."

"It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself."

"The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd."

"Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest."

"Justice... is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed."

"Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life."

"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship."

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help."

"I would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second in Rome."

"The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool."

"Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."

"It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble."

"Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little."

"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life."

"It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls."

"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist."

"Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss."

"If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another."

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

"The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it."

"A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs."

"The art of living well and the art of dying well are one."