“I scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I answer it.”

As far as possible, join faith to reason.

Good men seek it by the natural means of the virtues; evil men, however, try to achieve the same goal by a variety of concupiscences, and that is surely an unnatural way of seeking the good. Don’t you agree?

So nothing is ever good or bad unless you think it so, and vice versa. All luck is good luck to the man who bears it with equanimity.

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.

If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?

If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy.

In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune.

The science of numbers ought to be preferred as an acquisition before all others, because of its necessity and because of the great secrets and other mysteries which there are in the properties of numbers. All sciences partake of it, and it has need of none.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate … can look fortune in the face.

No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.

One’s virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.

Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.

Inconsistency is my very essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.