What disturbs people's minds are not events but their judgments on events.

Books are the training weights of the mind.

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

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat.

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off-see, it doesn't bite.

To adorn our characters by the charm of an amiable nature shows at once a lover of beauty and a lover of man.