It is no easy thing for a principle to become a man's own unless each day he maintains it and works it out in his life.

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.

If you would be good, first believe that you are bad.

Think of God oftener than you breathe.

Is freedom anything else than the power of living as we choose? Nothing else. Tell me then, you men, do you wish to live in error? We do not. No one who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in tension? By no means. No one who is in a state of fear or sorrow or tension is free, but whoever is delivered from sorrows or fears or anxieties, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.

Nothing is in reality either pleasant or unpleasant by nature but all things become so through habit

It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?