Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcome.

Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.

Freedom and happiness are won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

To get or not to get what we desire can be equally disappointing.

We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.

Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.

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.