A vine cannot behave olively, nor an olive tree vinely – it is impossible, inconceivable. No more can a human being wholly efface his native disposition.

The universe is transformation: life is opinion. 

Glory paid to our ashes comes too late.

The flaw which is hidden is deemed greater than it is.

The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.

Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in your power. Take away then, when you choose, your opinion, and like a mariner who has rounded the headland, you will find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.

Someone bathes in haste; don’t say he bathes badly, but in haste. Someone drinks a lot of wine; don’t say he drinks badly, but a lot. Until you know their reasons, how do you know that their actions are vicious?

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

Don’t believe your situation is genuinely bad – no one can make you do that. Is there smoke in the house? If it’s not suffocating, I will stay indoors; if it proves too much, I’ll leave. Always remember – the door is open.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

The present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose something he does not already possess.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

A rock is thrown in the air. It loses nothing by coming down, gained nothing by going up.

Death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful – and hence neither good nor bad.

If something does not make a person worse in himself, neither does it make his life worse, nor does it harm him without or within.

To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice.

Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.

Do little, if you want contentment of mind.

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.

Success or failure is caused more by mental attitude than by mental capacity.

Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

It is not daily increase but daily decrease – hack away the unessential! The closer to the source, the less wastage there is.

“Years may wrinkle your skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles your soul.”