Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

Nothing is evil which is according to nature.

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.

There is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay, and this is common to the entire universe.

"Sweep me up and send me where you please." For there I will retain my spirit, tranquil and content, as long as it can feel and act in harmony with its own nature. Is a change of place enough reason for my soul to become unhappy and worn, for me to become depressed, humbled, cowering, and afraid? Can you discover any reasons for this?

If you do the task before you always adhering to strict reason with zeal and energy and yet with humanity, disregarding all lesser ends and keeping the divinity within you pure and upright, as though you were even now faced with its recall - if you hold steadily to this, staying for nothing and shrinking from nothing, only seeking in each passing action a conformity with nature and in each word and utterance a fearless truthfulness, then the good life shall be yours. And from this course no man has the power to hold you back.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.