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As death, therefore, is hanging over our head every hour, how can a man ever be unshaken in soul if he fears it?

My dear Laelius and Scipio, we must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains.

Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.

Fear proceeds from the same things when absent which occasion grief when present.

Supposing, then, each separate misfortune to occasion a separate additional grief, the whole would be too great to be supportable.

The third is, that it is folly to wear one's self out with grief which can avail nothing.

Affected of course I am by the loss of a friend as I think there will never be again, such as I can fearlessly say there never was before.

Fire and water themselves, to use a common expression, are not of more universal use than friendship.

For them all is suspicion and anxiety; for them there is no possibility of friendship.

In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out gradually by an intermission of intercourse.

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.

Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection.

Such friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it.

The real limit to be observed in friendship is this: the characters of two friends must be stainless.

it is in regard to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that it expands, so to speak, at a friend's good fortune, contracts at his misfortunes

it was the virtue of the man that I loved, and that has not suffered death

An actor, in order to earn approval, is not bound to perform the play from beginning to end; let him only satisfy the audience in whatever act he appears.

In that category before anything else comes old age, to which all wish to attain, and at which all grumble when attained.

The fact is that old age is respectable just as long as it asserts itself, maintains its proper rights, and is not enslaved to any one.

This ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem as it were to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

a man who is always living in the midst of these studies and labours does not perceive when old age creeps upon him

he kept his mind at full stretch like a bow, and never gave in to old age by growing slack

if it has in store any of what I may call the food of study and philosophy, nothing can be pleasanter than an old age of leisure

Our first object, then, should be to prevent a breach; our second, to secure that, if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death.