"A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars in the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, 'And why were such things made?'"

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

"Nothing is good but what is profitable."

"That which does not make a man worse, does not make his life worse."

"The present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is all he has and that he cannot lose what he does not possess."