Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
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Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.
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Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.
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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.
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If you would judge, understand.
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Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.
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It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
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Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.
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Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.
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...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
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Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. - Epistulae ad Lucilium
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A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.
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I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
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The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.
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A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.
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Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
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Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
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The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.
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It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.
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As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
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If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.
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There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
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I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?
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Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
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There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
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Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
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Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.
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Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
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It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
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