A beneficent person is like a fountain watering the earth, and spreading fertility; it is, therefore, more delightful to give than to receive.

He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.

All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help

We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing.

My garden does not whet the appetite; it satisfies it. It does not provoke thirst through heedless indulgence, but slakes it by proffering its natural remedy. Amid such pleasures as these have I grown old.

The mind that is much elevated and insolent with prosperity, and cast down with adversity, is generally abject and base.

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.