Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.

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

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.

Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing?... what do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that.

I am not eternity, but a man; a part of the whole, as an hour is of the day.

The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.