We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.
When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
Common and vulgar people ascribe all ills that they feel to others; people of little wisdom ascribe to themselves; people of much wisdom, to no one.
Forgiveness is better than revenge, for forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge is the sign of a savage nature.
When the idea of any pleasure strikes your imagination, make a just computation between the duration of the pleasure and that of the repentance that is likely to follow it.
Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.
Difficulties show men what they are. In case of any difficulty remember that God has pitted you against a rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil.