Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

Haec ego non multis (scribo), sed tibi: satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus. I am writing this not to many, but to you: certainly we are a great enough audience for each other.

The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles.

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live.

If death causes you no pain when you're dead, it is foolish to allow the fear of it to cause you pain now.

Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.