You will die not because you're ill, but because you're alive.

Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.

...the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough....You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life?

The swiftness of time is infinite, as is still more evident when we look back on the past.

It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of good deeds, but good deeds themselves, and to seek for a good man even after having met with bad men.

It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.

Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.