Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.

Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.

Boasting, like gilded armour, is very different inside from outside.

Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.

When people laughed at him because he walked backward beneath the portico, he said to them: "Aren't you ashamed, you who walk backward along the whole path of existence, and blame me for walking backward along the path of the promenade?"

It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.

When the slave auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, "In ruling people."

He was going into a theatre, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, "This," he said, "is what I practise doing all my life."