“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”

Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Nothing in nature is by chance. Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

Absence, the highest form of presence.

The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.

The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.

Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.

We don’t actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.

If they don’t appreciate your presence, they may never recognize your absence.

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.

I have decorated your absence with every flower you hate. I end up hating em all.