Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things-eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies-since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

Self-denial is the best riches.

It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.

Live among others as if God beheld you; speak to God as if others were listening.

Unjust rule does not last forever.

Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness...she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated.

To give and to lose is nothing; but to lose and to give still is the part of a great mind.