If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?

So it follows that those who have reason have freedom to will or not to will, although this freedom is not equal in all of them. [...] human souls are more free when they persevere in the contemplation of the mind of God, less free when they descend to the corporeal, and even less free when they are entirely imprisoned in earthly flesh and blood.

If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?

The science of numbers ought to be preferred as an acquisition before all others, because of its necessity and because of the great secrets and other mysteries which there are in the properties of numbers. All sciences partake of it, and it has need of none.

One's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.

If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy.

So nothing is ever good or bad unless you think it so, and vice versa. All luck is good luck to the man who bears it with equanimity.