It is my business, to manage carefully and dexterously whatever happens

All human beings seek the happy life, but many confuse the means - for example, wealth and status - with that life itself. This misguided focus on the means to a good life makes people get further from the happy life. The really worthwhile things are the virtuous activities that make up the happy life, not the external means that may seem to produce it.

Unremarkable lives are marked by the fear of not looking capable when trying something new.

A ship should not be held by a single anchor; neither should life depend upon a single hope.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

It is better to advise than upbraid, for the one corrects the erring; the other only convicts them.

No living being is held by anything so strongly as by its own needs. Whatever therefore appears a hindrance to these, be it brother, or father, or child, or mistress, or friend, is hated, abhorred, execrated.