Contentment is natural wealth; luxury is artificial poverty.

A life devoted solely to accumulation is a life lived in exile from the spirit.

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue—to the end we should hear and see more than we speak.

Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.

A genuine friend is another self, mirroring the virtue and striving of one's own spirit.

Do not grieve for that which you have not, but rejoice for that which you have.

Other men live to eat, while I eat only to live.

Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued; and a good life is equivalent to a just and honorable life.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

To be self-controlled, patient, and content with simple things is the true nobility of the philosopher.

Misfortune reveals those who are not really friends.

To appreciate the beauty of a day, one must have experienced the chill of the night.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain that they are their own, and because the bringing of them forth is more painful.

Change in all things is sweet, for our nature is not simple, but compound.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.