No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training; it is part of his profession as a citizen to keep himself in good condition... [It is] a disgrace for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable.

Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in way, contrive to avoid death at any cost.

The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them.

The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it.......Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.

There is no greater magnificence than to defeat oneself. That is the magnificence.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is a habit.