The fame that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; intellectual superiority is a possession glorious and eternal.

But the case has proved that to be true which Appius says in his songs, that each man is the maker of his own fate.

He that will be angry for anything will be angry for nothing.

Advise well before you begin, and when you have maturely considered, then act with promptitude.

Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it.

Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.

They envy the distinction I have won; let them therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it.