He is a king who fears nothing, he is a king who desires nothing!
No one can have all he desires.
Do you desire not to be angry? Be not inquisitive. He who inquires what is said of him only works out his own misery.
If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.
It is easy enough to arouse in a listener a desire for what is honorable; for in every one of us nature has laid the foundations or sown the seeds of the virtues. We are born to them all, all of us, and when a person comes along with the necessary stimulus, then those qualities of the personality are awakened, so to speak, from their slumber.
I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.
The greater part of progress is the desire to progress.
Lack of desire is the greatest riches.
That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this -- that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution.
