"Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily..." - Quote by Marcus Aurelius

“He that dies in extreme old age will be reduced to the same state with him that is cut down untimely.”

“The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That's all you need to know. Nothing more. Don't demand to know "why such things exist." Anyone who understands the world will laugh at you, just as a carpenter would if you seemed shocked at finding sawdust in his workshop, or a shoemaker at scraps of leather left over from work.”

“It is the act of a madman to pursue impossibilities .”

“Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.”

“I have in my life never been guilty of saying things I did not mean - my nature is to go straight to the heart and if often I fail in doing so for the time being, I know that Truth ultimately makes itself heard and felt, as it has often done in my experience.”

“It is the man determines what is said, not the words.”

“Scarcely have I ever heard or read the introductory phrase, "I may say without vanity," but some striking and characteristic instance of vanity has immediately followed.”

“Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists - talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.”

“There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition,to the grave.”