The good life is impossible without a good state; and there is no greater blessing than a well-ordered state. - Cicero

We don't practise generosity in order to secure gratitude, nor do we invest our gifts in the hope of a favourable return. Rather, it is nature that inclines us towards generosity. Just so, we don't seek friendship with an expectation of gain, but regard the feeling of love as its own reward.

That person then, whoever it may be, whose mind is quiet through consistency and self control, who finds contentment in himself, who neither breaks down in adversity nor crumbles in fright, nor burns with any thirsty need nor dissolves into wild and futile excitement, that person is the wise one we are seeking, and that person is happy

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.