“The highest activity a human being can attain
is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
“Nothing in Nature is random.
A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.”
“Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.”
“Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure
of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.”
“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturbance of the peace.”
“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule,
not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”
“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions,
the more you become a lover of what is.”
“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue,
a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.”
“What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.”
“I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them,
but to understand them.” “In
so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”
“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases
to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
“There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.”
“In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable, in speculative thought
we are compelled to follow truth.” “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death,
and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”
“None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.”
“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”
“Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.”
“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.”
“Only in relation to our imagination
can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”
“The only way to avoid death is to make art.”
“Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
“Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's
rather than another’s, but under nature everything belongs to all.”
“A poor man is better than a rich man because he has a clear conscience.”
“A man is obliged to cry only in one case - from happiness.”
“Do not lend money to relatives because you will lose both.”
“Only a fool craves money, a smart one craves opportunities.”
“I call him free who is led solely by reason.”
“The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused
consciousness that animates the world.” “Reason is no match for passion.”
“Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.”