Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

That which is usually called dotage is not the weak point of all old men, but only of such as are distinguished by their levity.

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

For while we are enclosed in these confinements of the body, we perform as a kind of duty the heavy task of necessity; for the soul from heaven has been cast down from its dwelling on high and sunk, as it were, into the earth, a place just the opposite to godlike nature and eternity. But I believe that the immortal gods have sown souls in human bodies so there might exist beings to guard the world and after contemplating the order of heaven, might imitate it by their moderation and steadfastness in life.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition.

If a man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.