"Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it; ... in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer. A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is."

"The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them."

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."

"Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day."

"It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult."

"You shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings ofHecato; it is these words: "What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That wasindeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind."

"Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive."

"Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them."

"He who decides a case without hearing the other side though he decide justly cannot be considered just."

"Sorrowers tend to avoid what they are most fond of and try to give vent to their grief."

"We are members of one great body, planted by nature. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole."

"Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men."

"To expect punishment is to suffer it, and to earn it is to expect it."

"I am not a 'wise man,' nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes."

"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

"Cling, therefore, to this sound and wholesome plan of life; indulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. ... Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather. It makes no difference whether it is built of turf or variegated marble imported from another country: what you have to understand is that thatch makes a person just as good a roof as gold."

"How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change."

"Whom they have injured they also hate."

"Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones."

"All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return."

"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."

"If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person."

"A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body."

"Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool."

"It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable."

"So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is superfluous, what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting. All this hurrying from place to place won't bring you any relief, for you're travelling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way."

"Vice can be learnt even without a teacher."

"The trip doesn't exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears, so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn't do you any good? The things you're running away from are with you all the time."

"Man is a social animal."

"When I think over what I have said I envy dumb people."

"We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing."

"When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?"

"No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor."

"That you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation."

"Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline."

"On Epicurus; He says: "Contended poverty is an honourable estate." Indeed, if it is contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."

"Words need to be sown like seeds. No matter how tiny a seed may be, when in lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size."

"No man was ever wise by chance."

"How closely flattery resembles friendship! It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race; with wide-open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart, and it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm."

"F you wish to put off all worry, assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen."

"The liberal arts do not conduct the soul all the way to virtue, but merely set it going in that direction."

"Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all."

"Spurn everything that is added by way of decoration and display by unneccesary labour. Relect that nothing merits admiration except the spirit, the impressiveness of which prevents it from being impressed by anything."

"Reason shows us there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

"The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience the next for health of mind and then of body."

"I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness."

"Envy of other people shows how they are unhappy. Their continual attention to others behavior shows how they are boring."

"A great step toward independence is a good-humoured stomach."

"He who has great power should use it lightly."

"Here is your great soul-the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself."