Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

A man's action is only a poicture book of his creed.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.

It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.

Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.

So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self.