Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

Whether the events in our life are good or bad, greatly depends on the way we perceive them.

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

I consider it equal injustice to set our heart against natural pleasures and to set our heart too much on them. We should neither pursue them, nor flee them; we should accept them.

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

We are more unhappy to see people ahead of us than happy to see people behind us.