It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.

It is better to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled spirit, amid abundance

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

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Embrace reality. Think about what delights you - the small luxuries on which you depend, the people whom you cherish most. But remember that they have their own distinct character, which is quite a separate matter from how we happen to regard them.

Books are the training weights of the mind.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig.