The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it.

Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.

Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason.

As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!