Great Throughts Treasury

"All other love is extinguished by self-love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it."

"A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear."

"It is never too early or too late to care for the well-being of the soul."

"Only the just man enjoys peace of mind."

"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly."

"The greatest good is prudence; wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues."

"Most men are in a coma when they are at rest and made when they act."

"The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool."

"Virtue consisteth of three parts - temperance, fortitude, and justice."

"The beginning and the greatest good is prudence. Wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy; for from prudence are spring all the other virtues, and it teaches us that it is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honorably and justly, nor, again, to live a life of prudence, honor and justice without living pleasantly. For the virtues are by nature bound up with the pleasant life, and the pleasant life is inseparable from them."

"The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation."

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

"Virtue is the one thing without which pleasure cannot be."

"We say that pleasure is the starting-point and the end of living blissfully. For we recognize pleasure as a good which is primary and innate. We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience as the criterion of every good thing."

"We choose virtues on account of pleasure and not for their own sake."

"A strict belief, fate is the worst kind of slavery; on the other hand there is comfort in the thought that God will be moved by our prayers."

"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not."

"Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency."

"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."

"Live today, forget the cares of the past."

"For a wrongdoer to be undetected is difficult; and for him to have confidence that his concealment will continue is impossible."

"It is not so much our friend's help that helps us as the confidence of their help."

"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship."

"The flesh alone endures the storms of the present alone, the mind those of the past and future as well as the present."

"Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is not enough."

"The flesh believes that pleasure is limitless and that it requires unlimited time; but the mind, understanding the end and limit of the flesh and ridding itself of fears of the future, secures a complete life and has no longer any need for unlimited time."

"The fool with all his other thoughts, has this also; he is always getting ready to live."

"The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully."

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."

"When we have only a little we should be satisfied; for this reason, that those best enjoy abundance who are contented with the least."

"The wise man is little inconvenienced by fortune: things that matter are under the control of his own judgment and reason."

"Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little."

"You must be the slave of philosophy, if you would enjoy real freedom."

"It is Reason alone which makes life happy and pleasant, by expelling all false conceptions or opinions ..."

"A beneficent person is like a fountain watering the earth, and spreading fertility; it is, therefore, more delightful and more honorable to give than to receive."

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

"Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests."

"If you want to make a man happy, add not to his riches, but take away from his desires."

"A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs. "

"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship. "

"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life."

"If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another. "

"The art of living well and the art of dying well are one. "

"The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd. "

"Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss. "

"You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity."

"We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need."