Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is not how many books thou hast, but how good; careful reading profiteth, while that which is full of variety delighteth.
Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.
It is safer to offend certain men than it is to oblige them; for as proof that they owe nothing they seek recourse in hatred.
It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and - even more surprising - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.
Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure, if you know how to use it. The best morsel is reserved for last.
Principles are like seeds; they are little things which do much good, if the mind that receives them has the right attitudes.
To lose a friend is the greatest of all evils, but endeavour rather to rejoice that you possessed him than to mourn his loss.
A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation...you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.
The philosopher: he alone knows how to live for himself. He is the one, in fact, who knows the fundamental thing: how to live.
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
There is no benefit so large that malignity will not lessen it; none so narrow that a good interpretation will not enlarge it.
What must be shall be; and that which is a necessity to him that struggles, is little more than choice to him that is willing.
Truth will never be tedious unto him that travelleth in the secrets of nature; there is nothing but falsehood that glutteth us.
Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.
Let us fight the battle-retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.
Not a soul takes thought how well he may live- only how long: yet a good life might be everybody's, a long one can be nobody's.
Nothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years.
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.
What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint?
There in no one more unfortunate than the man who has never been unfortunate. for it has never been in his power to try himself.
Leisure without literature is death, or rather the burial of a living man -Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura
Many men provoke others to overreach them by excessive suspicion; their extraordinary distrust in some sort justifies the deceit.
Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.
To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.
Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.
Plato once wanted to punish one of his slaves and asked his nephew to do the actual whipping for he himself did not own his anger.
Our life's a moment and less than a moment, but even this mite nature has mockingly humored with some appearance of a longer span.
Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole.
We are more wicked together than separately. If you are forced to be in a crowd, then most of all you should withdraw into yourself.
Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.
Be not too hasty either with praise or blame; speak always as though you were giving evidence before the judgement-seat of the Gods.
If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him. Ignoranti quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est.
Those vices [luxury and neglect of decent manners] are vices of men, not of the times. [Lat., Hominum sunt ista [vitia], non temporum.
While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.
Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Why do people not confess vices? It is because they have not yet laid them aside. It is a waking person only who can tell their dreams.
The place one's in, though, doesn't make any contribution to peace of mind: it's the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself.
As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit
The body is not a permanent dwelling, but a sort of inn which is to be left behind when one perceives that one is a burden to the host.
Who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
There is the need for someone against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler, you won't make the crooked straight.
He who has fostered the sweet poison of love by fondling it, finds it too late to refuse the yoke which he has of his own accord assumed.
Without an adversary prowess shrivels. We see how great and efficient it really is only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of.
It's unknown the place and uncertain the time where death awaits you; thus you must expect death to find you, every time, at every place.
It is the mind that makes us rich and happy, in what condition soever we are, and money signifies no more to it than it does to the gods.
Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.
It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.