Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing? . . . What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you? If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that.
Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between men, a search for their cause, a condemnation of mere opinion .. . and the discovery of a standard of judgement.
If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows.
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these; for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
