Satisfied is not the one whom others think so, but the one who considers himself to be satisfied.
The soul that does not have a predetermined goal condemns itself to destruction, because, as the saying goes, he who is everywhere is nowhere.
If living in need is bad, then there is no need to live in need.
If you can be learned by the knowledge of others, you can only be wise on your own.
Life itself is neither good nor bad: it is a reservoir of both good and bad; it depends on what we do with it.
Laws enjoy general respect not because they are just, but because they are laws.
What good is the knowledge of things, if because of it we lose our peace and serenity.
When I imagine in my mind a man completely undressed (and precisely of that sex which is considered to be endowed with more beauty), when I imagine his faults and failings, all his inborn imperfections, then I find that we have grounds, more than any other animal, to cover our body.
He who misses the target misses as much as he who misses the target.
The best of our deeds is to live according to reason.
People believe in nothing more than what they know least.
If they didn't get what they wanted, they pretended to want what they got.
There is no more humiliating response than contemptuous silence.
There is no bolder pursuit than the pursuit of knowledge.
No one gives all his money to others, but each one gives his time and life; and there is nothing with which we are more profligate, and in which stinginess is not more useful and praiseworthy.
Since these people have failed to understand themselves and their own nature, which is constantly before their eyes and within them...can I trust their opinions about the causes of the ebb and flow of the Nile?
What's great is that it stops being that way when it's inappropriate.
The prudent man lost nothing if he kept to himself.
The most remarkable thing in the world is knowing how to belong to yourself.
The best evidence of wisdom is a permanent cheerfulness.
A powerful imagination gives rise to chance.
Death must be like life; we don't become someone else just because we die.
With suffering it is the same as with precious stones, which shine more or less according to the setting in which we catch them; likewise, suffering embraces us as much as we let ourselves fall prey to it.
Fate is more favorable to those enterprises in which success depends exclusively on it.
Man's happiness does not consist at all in dying beautifully, but, according to me, in living beautifully.
Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
Vanity and curiosity - these are the two whips of our soul. The latter pushes us to stick our noses in everything, and the former forces us not to leave anything uncertain and undecided.
A thousand paths deviate from the goal, and only one leads straight to it.
The science of manifesting in your natural essence is the mark of perfection and an almost divine quality. We tend to be someone else, without wanting to scrutinize our own being, and we step out of our own boundaries without knowing why we are really able to. There is no point in getting up on the catalige, because even on the catalige we have to move with the help of our own legs. And even on the highest throne in the world, we sit on the bottom.
Man... A single ray of the sun is enough to ignite and destroy him; it is enough to throw a little dust into his eyes (or let loose some bees...) and immediately all our legions, even under the command of one like Pompey, will be panic-stricken and utterly crushed.