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No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.
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No man finds it difficult to return to nature except the man who has deserted nature.
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Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all. . . . .
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I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.
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To meditate an injury is to commit one.
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The body is not a permanent dwelling, but a sort of inn which is to be left behind when one perceives that one is a burden to the host.
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Drunkenness is nothing but a self-induced state of insanity.
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All things are cause for either laughter or weeping.
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If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.
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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
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The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.
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Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
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The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labor at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world-loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.
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Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.
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We most often go astray on a well trodden and much frequented road.
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Cato, being scurrilously treated by a low and vicious fellow, quietly said to him, "A contest between us is very unequal, for thou canst bear ill language with ease, and return it with pleasure; but to me it is unusual to hear, and disagreeable to speak it." There are none more abusive to others than they that lie most open to it themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow.
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It goes far toward making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so; and he that does but suspect I will deceive him, gives me a sort of right to do so.
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God is near you, is with you, is inside you.
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There in no one more unfortunate than the man who has never been unfortunate. For it has never been in his power to try himself.
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If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.
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Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness...she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated.
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Everyone rushes his life on, and suffers from a yearning for the future and a boredom with the present. But that man who devotes every hour to his own needs, who plans every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears tomorrow.
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Our Creator shall continue to dwell above the sky, and that is where those on earth will end their thanksgiving.
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The key to getting everything you want is to never put all your begs in one ask-it!