. . . for until that God who rules all the region of the sky . . . has freed you from the fetters of your body, you cannot gain admission here. Men were created with the understanding that they were to look after that sphere called Earth, which you see in the middle of the temple. Minds have been given to them out of the eternal fires you call fixed stars and planets, those spherical solids which, quickened with divine minds, journey through their circuits and orbits with amazing speed.

Vicious habits are so great a stain to human nature, and so odious in themselves, that every person actuated by right reason would avoid them, though he were sure they would be always concealed both from God and man, and had no future punishment entailed upon them.

"I believe that no characteristic is so distinctively human as the sense of indebtedness we feel, not necessarily for a favor received, but even for the slightest evidence of kindness; and there is nothing so boorish, savage, inhuman as to appear to be overwhelmed by a favor, let alone unworthy of it."

The name of peace is sweet and the thing itself good, but between peace and slavery there is the greatest difference.

In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.

Anyone may fairly seek his own advantage, but no one has a right to do so at another's expense.