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.

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

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents." Translation by Sharon Lebell

Seek not the good in external things;seek it in yourselves.

Give me by all means the shorter and nobler life, instead of one that is longer but of less account!

Ruin and recovering are both from within.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.