“For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.”

“Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting.”

“Every habit and faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running. If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”

“What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.”

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions.”

“No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

“You may never know what results come of your actions. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

“The time is always right to do what's right.”