Seneca.
"If you wish to be loved, love"
"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable"
"We are often more frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than reality"
"True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not"
"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters"
Read- 'Letters from a Stoic.'
Plato.
"You can discover more about a man in an hour of play than a year in conversation"
"Courage is knowing what not to fear"
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is men who are afraid of the light"
"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses"
"To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death wheather it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man; but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil."
Read- 'Republic' or 'Dialogues.'
Epicurus.
“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
“You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”
"I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.”
"We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it.”
“When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind. For it is not continuous drinkings and revelings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit.”
Read- 'Letter on Happiness'
M.Aurelius.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”
Read- 'Meditations'
Aristotle.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
Read- 'Nicomachean Ethics'