- VS17. It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but the old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable, and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old age, as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped he has brought into safe harbor in his grateful recollections.
- VS55. We must heal our misfortunes by the grateful recollection of what has been, and by the recognition that it is impossible to undo that which has been done.
- VS67. A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs, yet it possesses all things in unfailing abundance; and if by chance it obtains many possessions, it is easy to distribute them so as to win the gratitude of neighbors.
- VS69. The ungrateful greed of the soul makes the creature everlastingly desire varieties in its lifestyle.
- VS75. The saying, “look to the end of a long life,” shows ungratefulness for past good fortune.
- U469 - Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, XVII.23: “Thanks be to blessed Nature because she has made what is necessary easy to supply, and what is not easy unnecessary.”
