“It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.”

“The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.”

“If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.”

“The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found.”

“Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are.”

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

“Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.”