We can't control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.

Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word -- on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.

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.

The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.

What matters most is what sort of person you are becoming. Wise individuals care only about whom they are today and who they can be tomorrow.