If you are struck by the appearance of any promised pleasure, guard yourself against being hurried away by it; but let the affair wait your leisure, and procure yourself some delay. Then bring to your mind both points of time: that in which you will enjoy the pleasure, and that in which you will repent and reproach yourself after you have enjoyed it; and set before you, in opposition to these, how you will be glad and applaud yourself if you abstain. And even though it should appear to you a seasonable gratification, take heed that its enticing, and agreeable and attractive force may not subdue you; but set in opposition to this how much better it is to be conscious of having gained so great a victory.

What is our nature? To be free, noble, self-respecting. What other animal blushes? What other can have a conception of shame? We must subordinate pleasure to these principles, to minister to them as a servant, to evoke our interests and to keep us in the way of our natural activities.

If someone is incapable of distinguishing good things from bad and neutral things from either – well, how could such a person be capable of love? The power to love, then, belongs only to the wise man.

If you long for your son or your friend [or your partner], when it is not given you to have him, know that you are longing for a fig in winter time.

Whenever externals are more important to you than your own integrity, then be prepared to serve them the remainder of your life.

People to whom such things are still denied come to imagine that everything good will be theirs if only they could acquire them. Then they get them: and their longing is unchanged, their anxiety is unchanged, their disgust is no less, and they still long for whatever is lacking. Freedom is not achieved by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.

It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body; for it is better to die than to live badly.

Passions stem from frustrated desire.

Death is necessary and cannot be avoided. I mean, where am I going to go to get away from it?

I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it.

What makes for freedom and fluency in the practice of writing? Knowledge of how to write. The same goes for the practice of playing an instrument. It follows that, in the conduct of life, there must be a science to living well.

People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them.

It is hard to combine and unite these two qualities, the carefulness of one who is affected by circumstances, and the intrepidity of one who heeds them not. But it is not impossible: else were happiness also impossible.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

Have you not hands, fool? Has not god made them for you? Sit down now and pray your nose may not run! Wipe it, rather, and do not blame god

The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys.

Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.

The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

Don’t let outward appearances mislead you into thinking that someone with more prestige, power or some other distinction must on that account be happy.

Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.

What prison? Where he is already: for he is there against his will; and wherever a man is against his will, that to him is a prison.

Permit nothing to cleave to you that is not your own; nothing to grow to you that may give you agony when it is torn away.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

It takes more than just a good looking body. You’ve got to have the heart and soul to go with it.

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone.

It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

The will of nature is to be learned out of things
in which we do not differ from each other.

If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows.

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit give it nothing which may tend to its increase.