Apollonius of Tyana

A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.

Multicolored stones and paintings, walkways, and theaters are useless in a city unless it also contains wisdom and law. Such things are the subject of wisdom and law, not equivalent to them.

The gods do not need sacrifices, so what might one do to please them? Acquire wisdom, it seems to me, and do all the good in one's power to those humans who deserve it.

I feel friendship towards philosophers, but towards sophists, teachers of literature, or any other such kind of godforsaken people, I neither feel friendship now, nor may I ever do so in the future.

As soldiers need not only courage but tactics also, so does a philosopher need not only courage and philosophy but discernment also, to tell what his right time of dying is - so that he neither seek it nor flee it.

Virtue comes by nature, learning, and practice, and thanks to virtue, all of the aforesaid may deserve approval.