Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.

Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.

Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.

It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.

Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.

Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.