Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

A great mind becomes a great fortune.

If you wished to be loved, love.

The soul has this proof of its divinity that divine things delight in it.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

We learn not in the school, but in life.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

There is nothing so disagreeable, that a patient mind cannot find some solace for it.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Liesure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.

If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.

Our (The Stoic) motto, as you know, is live according to nature.

Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

What fools these mortals be.

Time discovers truth.

Time heals what reason cannot.

Nothing costs so much as what is bought by prayers.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

Malice drinks one half of its own poison.

As is a tale, so is life not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

That grief is light which can take counsel.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

To strive with an equal is dangerous with a superior, mad with an inferior, degrading.

We become wiser by adversity prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

If a man knows not what harbour he seeks, any wind is the right wind.

A great step toward independence is a good humored stomach.

It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die.

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.

Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say let speech harmonize with life.

...a sword never kills anybody it's a tool in the killer's hand. From Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Letters to Lucilius on Morals, Letter 87, c.63-65

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.

No man ever became wise by chance.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely for science is but one.

The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party there is no battle unless there be two.

He who has injured thee was stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him if stronger, spare thyself.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

An action will not be right unless the will be right for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right for from thence comes the will.