The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.

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 ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.

Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.