I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.
Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?
The true man is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material. But this is going to take some sweat to accomplish.
Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of physics, ethics, and dialectics.
Why are we still lazy, indifferent and dull? Why do we look for excuses to avoid training and exercising our powers of reason?
How long will you wait before you demand the best of yourself, and trust reason to determine what is best?
To have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more will you see?
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
A brief existence is common to all things, and yet you avoid and pursue all things as if they would be eternal.
Every part of me then will be reduced by change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe, and so on forever.
In a little while you will have forgotten everything; in a little while everything will have forgotten you.
Whether the universe is a concourse of atoms, or nature is a system, let this first be established: that I am a part of the whole that is governed by nature; next, that I stand in some intimate connection with other kindred parts.
Is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And can you take a hot bath unless the wood for the fire undergoes a change? And can you be nourished unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
If you lost the capacity to read, or play music, you would think it was a disaster, but you think nothing of losing the capacity to be honest, decent and civilized.
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