Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.
You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.
To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand
It is one thing to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to the memory. But to know is to make each thing one's own, not depend on the text and always to look back to the teacher. "Zeno said this, Cleanthes said this." Let there be space between you and the book.
Money does all things for reward. Some are pious and honest as long as they thrive upon it, but if the devil himself gives better wages, they soon change their party.
Modesty forbids what the law does not.
Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: " Is this the condition that I feared?"
Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.
We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it.
In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases.
The first proof of a well-ordered mind is to be able to pause and linger within itself.
A hungry people listens not to reason, not cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.
The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labor at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world-loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.
Many men provoke others to overreach them by excessive suspicion; their extraordinary distrust in some sort justifies the deceit.
Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his plate is no more that earthenware.
The soul has this proof of divinity: that divine things delight it.
We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.
There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.
If wisdom were offered me with the proviso that I should keep it shut up and refrain from declaring it, I should refuse. There's no delight in owning anything unshared.
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.
He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways.
What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
When thou hast profited so much that thou respectest even thyself, thou mayst let go thy tutor.
True joy is a serene and sober motion; and they are miserably out so that take laughing for rejoicing; the seat of it is within, and there is no cheerfulness like the resolutions of a brave mind.
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