“Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.”

We can’t control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.

It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

Men are not troubled by things themselves, but by their thoughts about them.

Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.

We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.

Events do not just happen, but arrive by appointment.

Don’t be concerned with other people’s impressions of you. They are dazzled and deluded by appearances. Stick with your purpose. This alone will strengthen your will and give your life coherence.

Anything worth putting off is worth abandoning altogether.

Don’t consent to be hurt and you won’t be hurt – this is a choice over which you have control.

If you seek Truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found Truth, you need not fear being defeated.

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.

Freedom and happiness are won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

Try not to react merely in the moment. Pull back from the situation. Take a wider view. Compose yourself.

All religions must be tolerated for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

Beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealment.

Beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living – and the Ideal shames us all.

The dreamers are the saviors of the world.

Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.

You’re always you, and that doesn’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.