Death is meaningless to the living because they are living, and meaningless to the dead… because they are dead.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.