Quotes

When you set about any action, remind yourself of what nature the action is.

Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law.

Everything has two handles: one by which it may be borne, another by which it cannot.

The body is to everyone the proper measure of its possessions, as the foot is of the shoe.

Be mostly silent, or speak merely what is needful, and in few words.

But we have reason within us; and it directs us, even with these hazards, to stand by our friend and our country.

When you have fully considered all these things, approach, if you please—that is, if, by parting with them, you have a mind to purchase serenity, freedom, and tranquillity.

Consider first, man, what the matter is, and what your own nature is able to bear.

It is enough if everyone fully performs his own proper business.

Be content, then, in everything, with being a philosopher; and if you wish to seem so likewise to anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you.

Do not yearn in desire toward it, but wait till it reaches you.

It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself.

Therefore, at the same time that we lie, we are very ready to show how it is demonstrated that lying is wrong.

To understand nature, and follow her.

You must cultivate either your own reason or else externals; apply yourself either to things within or without you—that is, be either a philosopher or one of the mob.

You can be unconquerable if you enter into no combat in which it is not in your own power to conquer.

Do not desire to be thought to know anything; and though you should appear to others to be somebody, distrust yourself.

Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien.