A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.

Whose happiness is so firmly established that he has no quarrel from any side with his estate of life?

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate ... can look fortune in the face.

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.

In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.