Controversial Sayings

You will do the greatest service to the state if you shall raise, not the roofs of the houses, but the souls of the citizens: for it is better that great souls should dwell in small houses rather than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses.

If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, 'He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.'

You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are …

Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice – now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is…

For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.

Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day – especially death – and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess.

It is a universal law — have no illusion — that every creature alive is attached to nothing so much as to its own self-interest.

Whenever anyone criticizes or wrongs you, remember that they are only doing or saying what they think is right. They cannot be guided by your views, only their own; so if their views are wrong, they are the ones who suffer insofar as they are misguid…

Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond …

Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.

For there is some use even in an ass, but not so much as in an ox: there is also use in a dog, but not so much as in a slave: there is also some use in a slave, but not so much as in citizens: there is also some use in citizens, but not so much as in…

If you wish to improve, be content to appear foolish or stupid.

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.

Only the educated are free.

God save me from fools with a little philosophy—no one is more difficult to reach.

The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter.

When you have said 'Tomorrow I will begin to attend,' you must be told that you are saying this: 'Today I will be shameless, disregardful of time and place, mean; it will be in the power of others to give me pain, today I will be passionate and envio…

What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.