Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

God, or Nature.

You will not find thinking apart from Being, in which it is expressed.

-- Parmenides

All is number.

-- Pythagoras

There is no envy in the good.

-- Plato

Every unity either participates in the One or is itself the One.

-- Proclus

Everything that is capable of turning back upon itself is incorporeal.

-- Porphyry

Before heaven and earth existed, there was, ultimately, principle (li) first.

-- Zhu Xi