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.

If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.

To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death.

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.

That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: "Shut up," he said, "so that they do not realize that you are here with me.

A man should not so much respect what he eats, as with whom he eats.