The thing I fear most is fear.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

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.

The continuous work of our life is to build death.

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.

We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.