“Virtue comes by nature, learning, and practice, and thanks to virtue, all of the aforesaid may deserve approval.”

“I feel friendship towards philosophers, but towards sophists, teachers of literature, or any other such kind of godforsaken people, I neither feel friendship now, nor may I ever do so in the future.”

“The gods do not need sacrifices, so what might one do to please them? Acquire wisdom, it seems to me, and do all the good in one's power to those humans who deserve it.”

“Multicolored stones and paintings, walkways, and theaters are useless in a city unless it also contains wisdom and law. Such things are the subject of wisdom and law, not equivalent to them.”

“A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will prob...”

“Lost Time is never found again.”

“How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever.”

“Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.”

“I have little use for religion as it is practiced, or for astrology, or for belief in witchcraft or omens of good or ill-luck. I think they all stem from some insufficiency in mens minds, perhaps f...”

“It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent.”

“So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in - at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives deligh...”

“I have gone to war and now I can issue my complaint. I can sit on my porch and complain all day. And you must listen. Some of you will say to me: You signed the contract, you crying bitch, and you ...”

“Twelve years ago, when I was 10, I played at being a soldier. I walked up the brook behind our house in Bronxville to a junglelike, overgrown field and dug trenches down to water level with my frie...”

“For no matter how many battles had been won or lost, no matter how many friends and soldiers killed, every battle felt like the first. And I realized that it wasn't the training, nor the pain of se...”