The flourishing life cannot be achieved until we moderate our desires and see how superficial and fleeting they are.

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions. Vigilantly practice polite indifference to that which we can't control. Your happiness can only be found within.

What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other