If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. It is in your power to erase this judgment about it. If anything in your own nature gives you pain, you are who hinders you from correcting your opinion.

Neither in writing nor in reading wilt thou be able to lay down rules for others before thou shalt have first learned to obey rules thyself.

A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.

A rational nature admits of nothing but what is serviceable to the rest of mankind.

Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the moutains . . . But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree . . . when thou canst at a moment's notice retire into thyself.

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.

Persuade me or prove to me that I am mistaken in thought or deed, and I will gladly change - for it is the truth I seek, and the truth never harmed anyone. Harm comes from persisting in error and clinging to ignorance.