Aristotle

“Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government.”

“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

“Nature does nothing in vain.”

“Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.”

“All human happiness and misery take the form of action.”

“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”

“The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.”

“Wonder implies the desire to learn.”

“The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.”

“It is no part of a physician's business to use either persuasion or compulsion upon the patients.”

“If the art of ship-building were in the wood, ships would exist by nature.”

“Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.”

“A man's happiness consists in the free exercise of his highest faculties.”

“I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.”

“The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.”

“Happiness depends on ourselves.”

“For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements.”

“We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.”

“My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside.”

“The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society.”

“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.”

“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”

“A friend is another I.”

“Teaching is the highest form of understanding.”

“We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses—in short from fewer premisses; for... given that all these are equally well known, where they are fewer knowledge will be more speedily acquired, and that is a desideratum. The argument implied in our contention that demonstration from fewer assumptions is superior may be set out in universal form...”

“Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative”

“For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other should rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet.”

“Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.”

“It is necessary that every thing which is harmonized, should be generated from that which is void of harmony, and that which is void of harmony from that which is harmonized. ...But there is no difference, whether this is asserted of harmony, or of order, or composition... the same reason will apply to all of these.”

“We deliberate not about ends, but about means.”

“The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.”

“[U]niversal is known according to reason, but that which is particular, according to sense...”

“Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.”

“The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing.”

“[A]ll things as subsist from nature appear to contain in themselves a principle of motion and permanency; some according to place, others according to increase and diminuation; and others according to change in quality.”

“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”

“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”

“Friendship also seems to be the bond that hold communities together.”

“Since... nature is a principle of motion and mutation... it is necessary that we should not be ignorant of what motion is... But motion appears to belong to things continuous; and the infinite first presents itself to the view in that which is continuous. ...[F]requently ...those who define the continuous, employ the nature or the infinite, as if that which is divisible to infinity is continuous.”

“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.”

“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.”

“A change in the shape of the body creates a change in the state of the soul.”

“[I]t is impossible for motion to subsist without place, and void, and time.”

“It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.”

“It is likely that unlikely things should happen”

“[T]hey pronounce absurdly who thus speak, as the Pythagoreans assert: for at the same time they make the infinite to be essence, and distribute it into parts.”

“There are no experienced young people. Time makes experience.”

“The goal of war is peace, of business, leisure”

“[I]t is impossible that each of the elements should be infinite. For that is body which has interval on all sides; and that is infinite which has extension without bound.”

“God has many names, though He is only one Being.”

“Nothing in life is more necessary than friendship.”

“[T]he infinite is in capacity. That, however, which is infinite in capacity is not to be assumed as that which is infinite in energy. ...[I]t has its being in capacity, and in division and diminution. ...[I]t is always possible to assume something beyond it. It does not, however, on this account surpass every definite magnitude; as in division it surpasses every definite magnitude, and will be less.”

“To be angry is easy. But to be angry with the right man at the right time and in the right manner, that is not easy.”

“The business of every art is to bring something into existence, and the practice of an art involves the study of how to bring into existence something which is capable of having such an existence and has its efficient cause in the maker and not in itself.”

“Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.”

“Plato... introduces two infinities, because both in increase and diminution there appears to be transcendency, and a progression to infinity. Though... he did not use them: for neither is there infinity in numbers by diminution or division; since unity is a minimum: nor by increase; for he extends number as far as to the decad.”

“The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.”

“Greatness of Soul seems therefore to be as it were a crowning ornament of the virtues; it enhances their greatness, and it cannot exist without them. Hence it is hard to be truly great-souled, for greatness of soul is impossible without moral nobility.”

“The bodies of which the world is composed are solids, and therefore have three dimensions. Now, three is the most perfect number,—it is the first of numbers, for of one we do not speak as a number, of two we say both, but three is the first number of which we say all. Moreover, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

“Whether we will philosophize or we won't philosophize, we must philosophize.”

“Music imitates (represents) the passions or states of the soul, such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites.”

“That body is heavier than another which, in an equal bulk, moves downward quicker.”

“Hope is a waking dream.”

“For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.”

“It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality.”

“The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties. This exercise must occupy a complete lifetime. One swallow does make a spring, nor does one fine day. Excellence is a habit, not an event.”

“Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.”

“Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.”

“But voice is a certain sound of that which is animated; for nothing inanimate emits a voice; but they are said to emit a voice from similitude, as a pipe, and a lyre, and such other inanimate things, have extension, modulation, and dialect; for thus it appears, because voice, also, has these.”

“Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.”

“Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul...when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.”

“We should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful.”

“In everything, it is no easy task to find the middle.”

“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”

“The essential nature (concerning the soul) cannot be corporeal, yet it is also clear that this soul is present in a particular bodily part, and this one of the parts having control over the rest (heart).”

“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.”

“The Eyes are the organs of temptation, and the Ears are the organs of instruction.”

“Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.”

“Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end.”

“Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions.”

“He who is by nature not his own but another's man is by nature a slave.”

“Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.”

“A gentleman is not disturbed by anything”

“Quid quid movetur ab alio movetur"(nothing moves without having been moved).”

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”

“Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”

“Just as it sometimes happens that deformed offspring are produced by deformed parents, and sometimes not, so the offspring produced by a female are sometimes female, sometimes not, but male, because the female is as it were a deformed male.”

“Friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them, and it is this mirroring that helps them improve themselves as persons.”

“Man, as an originator of action, is a union of desire and intellect.”

“All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”

“Education is the best provision for old age.”

“Nature of man is not what he was born as, but what he is born for.”

“The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.”

“If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.”

“No science ever defends its first principles.”

“It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.”

“Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.”

“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.”

“Beauty is a gift of God.”

“If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.”

“Truth is a remarkable thing. We cannot miss knowing some of it. But we cannot know it entirely.”

“For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Dædalus or the tripods of Hephæstus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves.”

“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

“A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.”

“Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life.”

“The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”

“The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully.”

“Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.”

“Fate of empires depends on the education of youth”

“Memory is the scribe of the soul.”

“For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity. Now … it is not probable that these should be entirely mistaken, but rather that they should be right in at least some one respect or even in most respects.”

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”

“A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave... The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities - a natural defectiveness.”

“A government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.”

“Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.”

“One thing alone not even God can do,To make undone whatever hath been done.”

“True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.”

“Happiness is a state of activity.”

“The soul suffers when the body is diseased or traumatized, while the body suffers when the soul is ailing.”

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

“The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.”

“To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.”

“All men by nature desire knowledge.”

“For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”

“Earthworms are the intenstines of the soil.”

“With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.”

“.... In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.”

“Education is the best provision for old age.”

“For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.”

“Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.”

“It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.”

“Legislative enactments proceed from men carrying their views a long time back; while judicial decisions are made off hand.”

“Of ill-temper there are three kinds: irascibility, bitterness, sullenness. It belongs to the ill-tempered man to be unable to bear either small slights or defeats but to be given to retaliation and revenge, and easily moved to anger by any chance deed or word. Ill-temper is accompanied by excitability of character, instability, bitter speech, and liability to take offence at trifles and to feel these feelings quickly and on slight occasions.”

“A friend to all is a friend to none.”

“Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited … and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”

“For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one's strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases and preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues. This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.”

“...happiness is an activity and a complete utilization of virtue, not conditionally but absolutely.”

“The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.”

“Be a free thinker and don't accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in.”

“Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.”

“Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest of external goods.”

“In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.”

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

“All art is concerned with coming into being.”

“Man is by nature a political animal.”

“He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.”

“Therefore only an utterly senseless person can fail to know that our characters are the result of our conduct.”

“The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”

“For the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable.”

“In order to be effective you need not only virtue but also mental strength.”

“When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.”

“The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take is one of self-discovery. To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself, you must not be afraid to be alone. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

“We should aim rather at leveling down our desires than leveling up our means.”

“A friend is simply one soul in two bodies.”

“The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.”

“It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.”

“The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one or of the few, or of the many, are perversions. For the members of a state, if they are truly citizens, ought to participate in its advantages.”

“The law is reason unaffected by desire.”

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

“And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.”

“Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss, but that we aim too low and hit.”

“Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be false, the claim that there is no true assertion.”

“People never know each other until they have eaten a certain amount of salt together.”

“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”

“Life is only meaningful when we are striving for a goal .”

“It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit”

“Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.”

“Man is by nature a political animal.”

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”

“Obstinate people can be divided into the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.”

“My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.”

“Nature does nothing uselessly.”

“A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything.”

“We laugh at that which we cannot bear to face.”

“Pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as possible.”

“The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole.”

“We are what we repeatedly do... excellence, therefore, isn't just an act, but a habit and life isn't just a series of events, but an ongoing process of self-definition.”

“The probable is what usually happens.”

“But what is happiness? If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul.”

“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”

“Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.”

“When you feel yourself lacking something, send your thoughts towards your Intimate and search for the Divinity that lives within you.”

“It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.”

“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”

“Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.”

“It is not sufficient to know what one ought to say, but one must also know how to say it.”

“Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, therein lies your vocation. These two, your talents and the needs of the world, are the great wake up calls to your true vocation in life... to ignore this, is in some sense, is to lose your soul.”

“All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world”

“Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

“You can never learn anything that you did not already know”

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”

“He who hath many friends hath none.”

“Men … are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states, suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause — the wickedness of human nature.”

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”

“The greatest victory is over self.”

“A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.”

“One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

“We work to earn our leisure.”

“Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.”

“The true nature of a thing is the highest it can become.”

“It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.”

“When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.”

“You should never think without an image.”

“It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.”

“Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.”

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”

“A friend is a second self.”

“There is honor in being a dog.”

“Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.”

“The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.”

“It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.”

“And it is characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes family and a state.”

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

“That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.”

“Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances.”

“Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.”

“Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.”

“They should rule who are able to rule best.”

“Doubt is the beginning of wisdom”

“The soul never thinks without a picture.”

“When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence.”

“Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.”

“The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.”

“Nature creates nothing without a purpose.”

“Happiness involves engagement in activities that promote one's highest potentials.”

“What soon grows old? Gratitude.”

“A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange.... Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.”

“Character is determined by choice, not opinion.”

“Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.”

“The same ideas, one must believe, recur in men's minds not once or twice but again and again.”

“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.”

“The law is reason unaffected by desire.”

“Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

“It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.”

“To leave the number of births unrestricted, as is done in most states, inevitably causes poverty among the citizens, and poverty produces crime and faction.”

“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”

“At the intersection where your gifts, talents, and abilities meet a human need; therein you will discover your purpose”

“If men are given food, but no chastisement nor any work, they become insolent.”

“Cruel is the strife of brothers.”

“Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.”

“The senses are gateways to the intelligence. There is nothing in the intelligence which did not first pass through the senses.”

“Maybe crying is a means of cleaning yourself out emotionally. Or maybe it's your last resort; the only way to express yourself when words fail, the same as when you were a baby and had no words.”

“Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.”

“Human beings are curious by nature.”

“Men are divided between those who are as thrifty as if they would live forever, and those who are as extravagant as if they were going to die the next day.”

“Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal absolutely [in all respects]."”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“There is no genius who hasn't a touch of insanity.”

“The high-minded man is fond of conferring benefits, but it shames him to receive them.”

“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”

“Try is a noisy way of doing nothing.”

“Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.”

“The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”

“In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge.”

“Every great genius has an admixture of madness.”

“Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.”

“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”

“Men in general desire the good and not merely what their fathers had.”

“But for those that are equal to have an unequal share and those that are alike an unlike share is contrary to nature, and nothing contrary to nature is noble.”

“Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity.”

“A right election can only be made by those who have knowledge.”

“Law is order, and good law is good order.”

“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.”

“The unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.”

“Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.”

“Practical life is not necessarily directed toward other people, as some think; and it is not the case that practical thoughts are only those which result from action for the sake of what ensues. On the contrary, much more practical are those mental activities and reflections which have their goal in themselves and take place for their own sake.”

“Self-sufficiency is both a good and an absolute good.”

“Between husband and wife friendship seems to exist by nature, for man is naturally disposed to pairing.”

“Let us then enunciate the functions of a state and we shall easily elicit what we want: First there must be food; secondly, arts, for life requires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants....”

“It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.”

“For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.”

“Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.”

“The soul of man may be divided into two parts; that which has reason in itself, and that which hath not, but is capable of obeying its dictates.”

“He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.”

“Every rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal.”

“To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.”

“Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.”

“The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.”

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”

“Salt water when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form salt water when it condenses again. This I know by experiment. The same thing is true in every case of the kind: wine and all fluids that evaporate and condense back into a liquid state become water. They all are water modified by a certain admixture, the nature of which determines their flavour.”

“It is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why any one should have a knowledge of it.”

“It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.”

“Tools may be animate as well as inanimate; for instance, a ship's captain uses a lifeless rudder, but a living man for watch; for a servant is, from the point of view of his craft, categorized as one of its tools. So any piece of property can be regarded as a tool enabling a man to live, and his property is an assemblage of such tools; a slave is a sort of living piece of property; and like any other servant is a tool in charge of other tools.”

“For well-being and health, again, the homestead should be airy in summer, and sunny in winter. A homestead possessing these qualities would be longer than it is deep; and its main front would face the south.”

“It seems that ambition makes most people wish to be loved rather than to love others.”

“To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.”

“It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”

“We are better able to study our neighbours than ourselves, and their actions than our own.”

“Justice is Equality...but equality of what?”

“Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.”

“Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power to not act.”

“Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”

“Wit is cultured insolence.”

“Philosophy can make people sick.”

“Dissimilarity of habit tends more than anything to destroy affection.”

“It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.”

“Every man should be responsible to others, nor should any one be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed, there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man.”

“PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.”

“A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language ... not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.”

“The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.”

“To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.”

“A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.”

“Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.”

“And inasmuch as the great-souled man deserves most, he must be the best of men; for the better a man is the more he deserves, and he that is best deserves most. Therefore the truly great-souled man must be a good man. Indeed greatness in each of the virtues would seem to go with greatness of soul.”

“The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.”

“Education is the best provision for old age.”

“But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.”

“Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”

“...in this way the structure of the universe- I mean, of the heavens and the earth and the whole world- was arranged by one harmony through the blending of the most opposite principles.”

“The appropriate age for marrige is around eighteen and thirty-seven for man”

“Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.”

“Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.”

“To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.”

“For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.”

“It is no easy task to be good.”

“I seek to bring forth what you almost already know.”

“The roots of education … are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

“Every man should be responsible to others, nor should anyone be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man. But the principle of responsibility secures that which is the greatest good in states; the right persons rule and are prevented from doing wrong, and the people have their due. It is evident that this is the best kind of democracy, and why? because the people are drawn from a certain class.”

“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.”

“I have gained this by philosophy … I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.”

“It has been well said that 'he who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.' The two are not the same, but the good citizen ought to be capable of both; he should know how to govern like a freeman, and how to obey like a freeman - these are the virtues of a citizen.”

“We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.”

“Liars … when they speak the truth they are not believed.”

“The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.”

“He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, store it away in his mind, that man is utterly worthless.”

“Hope is the dream of a waking man.”

“It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.”

“Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.”

“A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.”

“Anybody can get hit over the head.”

“There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.”

“For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.”

“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”

“Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.”

“In the many forms of government which have sprung up there has always been an acknowledgement of justice and proportionate equality, although mankind fail in attaining them, as indeed I have already explained. Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”

“Law is order, and good law is good order.”

“The law is reason, free from passion.”

“A bad man can do a million times more harm than a beast.”

“Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal absolutely.”

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”

“Money is a guarantee that we can have what we want in the future”

“Either a beast or a god.”

“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.”

“The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.”

“Our feelings towards our friends reflect our feelings towards ourselves.”

“Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.”

“Change in all things is sweet.”

“Every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice.”

“The light of the day is followed by night, as a shadow follows a body.”

“Goodness is to do good to the deserving and love the good and hate the wicked, and not to be eager to inflict punishment or take vengeance, but to be gracious and kindly and forgiving.”

“Happiness, then, is found to be something perfect and self-sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed.”

“Where your talents and the needs of the world cross; there lies your vocation.”

“If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.”

“Our characters are the result of our conduct.”

“Wickedness is nourished by lust.”

“Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.”

“All friendly feelings toward others come from the friendly feelings a person has for himself.”

“One has no friend who has many friends.”

“Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.”

“Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.”

“The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants.”

“Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

“Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises.”

“The life of theoretical philosophy is the best and happiest a man can lead. Few men are capable of it and then only intermittently. For the rest there is a second-best way of life, that of moral virtue and practical wisdom.”

“Happiness is activity.”

“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”

“All proofs rest on premises.”

“One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect at the same time.”

“If the poor, for example, because they are more in number, divide among themselves the property of the rich,- is not this unjust? . . this law of confiscation clearly cannot be just.”

“There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions--that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.”

“Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.”

“All men by nature desire knowledge.”

“A promise made must be a promise kept.”

“Happiness is essentially perfect; so that the happy man requires in addition the goods of the body, external goods and the gifts of fortune, in order that his activity may not be impeded through lack of them.”

“Happiness is a thing honored and perfect. This seems to be borne out by the fact that it is a first principle or starting-point, since all other things that all men do are done for its sake; and that which is the first principle and cause of things good we agree to be something honorable and divine.”

“It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.”

“Beauty is the gift of God”

“Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.”

“The difference between a learned man and an ignorant one is the same as that between a living man and a corpse.”

“A man is the origin of his action.”

“The End is included among goods of the soul, and not among external goods.”

“We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement - each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.”

“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.”

“The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.”

“Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good.”

“Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.”

“Happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot.”

“A man who examines each subject from a philosophical standpoint cannot neglect them: he has to omit nothing, and state the truth about each topic.”

“Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.”

“He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.”

“Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.”

“Those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are thought to be fools, and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at the right time, or with the right persons.”

“We are what we frequently do.”

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”

“Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.”

“The rattle is a toy suited to the infant mind, and education is a rattle or toy for children of larger growth.”

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

“Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honour than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensure a good life.”

“Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.”

“The ideal man takes joy in doing favors for others.”

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”

“The wise man knows of all things, as far as possible, although he has no knowledge of each of them in detail”

“My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.”

“For what one has to learn to do, we learn by doing.”

“Think as the wise men think, but talk like the simple people do.”

“The true nature of anything is what it becomes at its highest.”

“Through discipline comes freedom.”

“The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.”

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.”

“The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.”

“Happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect goodness”

“The greatest of all pleasures is the pleasure of learning.”

“Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever .... Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.”

“What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.”

“All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.”

“95% of everything you do is the result of habit.”

“For what is the best choice for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.”

“Greatness of spirit is accompanied by simplicity and sincerity.”

“Business or toil is merely utilitarian. It is necessary but does not enrich or ennoble a human life.”

“Humility is a flower which does not grow in everyone's garden.”

“The ensouled is distinguished from the unsouled by its being alive. Now since being alive is spoken of in many ways, even if only one of these is present, we say that the thing is alive, if, for instance, there is intellect or perception or spatial movement and rest or indeed movement connected with nourishment and growth and decay. It is for this reason that all the plants are also held to be alive . . .”

“Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled ; and by doing brave acts, we become brave.”

“The Life of the intellect is the best and pleasantest for man, because the intellect more than anything else is the man. Thus it will be the happiest life as well.”

“The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.”

“Perception starts with the eye.”

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

“The physician heals, Nature makes well.”

“The proof that you know something is that you are able to teach it”

“Music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul, and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be directed to music and must be educated in it.”

“Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.”

“A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.”

“Life cannot be lived, and understood, simultaneously.”

“The intention makes the crime.”

“Wit is educated insolence.”

“It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.”

“For imitation is natural to man from his infancy. Man differs from other animals particularly in this, that he is imitative, and acquires his rudiments of knowledge in this way; besides, the delight in it is universal.”

“Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.”

“No one loves the man whom he fears.”

“I say that habit's but a long practice, friend, and this becomes men's nature in the end.”

“The hardest victory is the victory over self.”

“Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.”

“The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.”

“Soul and body, I suggest react sympathetically upon each other. A change in the state of the soul produces a change in the shape of the body and conversely, a change in the shape of the body produces a change in the state of the soul.”

“Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.”

“We can't learn without pain.”

“Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“A speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with Pathos.”

“Well begun is half done.”

“Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.”

“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”

“A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.”

“The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.”

“Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief.”

“Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.”

“To appreciate the beauty of a snow flake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.”

“We are what we continually do.”

“Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

“Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action.”

“For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in making credible.”

“Friendship is essentially a partnership.”

“Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.”

“Health is a matter of choice, not a mystery of chance”

“The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.”

“If something's bound to happen, it will happen.. Right time, right person, and for the best reason.”

“No one praises happiness as one praises justice, but we call it a 'blessing,' deeming it something higher and more divine than things we praise.”

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

“We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.”

“The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference.”

“Today you can start forming habits for overcoming all obstacles in life... even nicotine cravings”

“If you see a man approaching with the obvious intent of doing you good, run for your life. Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.”

“Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws.”

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

“It is clear, then, that the earth must be at the centre and immovable, not only for the reasons already given, but also because heavy bodies forcibly thrown quite straight upward return to the point from which they started, even if they are thrown to an infinite distance. From these considerations then it is clear that the earth does not move and does not lie elsewhere than at the centre.”

“The secret to humor is surprise.”

“The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.”

“Being a father is the most rewarding thing a man whose career has plateaued can do.”

“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”

“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.”

“The society that loses its grip on the past is in danger, for it produces men who know nothing but the present, and who are not aware that life had been, and could be, different from what it is.”

“Law is mind without reason.”

“The honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.”

“By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents”

“Change in all things is sweet.”

“You are what you repeatedly do”

“Definition of tragedy: A hero destroyed by the excess of his virtues”

“Worthless persons appointed to have supreme control of weighty affairs do a lot of damage.”

“Education is the best provision for old age.”

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”

“A common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.”

“Bad men are full of repentance.”

“People generally despise where they flatter.”

“The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of the dissimilar.”

“A very populous city can rarely, if ever, be well governed.”

“Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.”

“Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.”

“There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.”

“Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning.”

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

“Revolutions are effected in two ways, by force and by fraud.”

“Love well, be loved and do something of value.”

“Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.”

“Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.”

“Why do men seek honour? Surely in order to confirm the favorable opinion they have formed of themselves.”

“What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”

“Men are marked from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled.”

“The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.”

“There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.”

“Your happiness depends on you alone.”

“To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.”

“To Unlearn is as hard as to Learn”

“We can do noble acts without ruling the earth and sea.”

“The best things are placed between extremes.”

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

“A man can make up his mind quickly when he has only a little to make up.”

“The man who is content to live alone is either a beast or a god.”

“The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.”

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

“Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.”

“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”

“First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”

“Hope is a waking dream.”

“The quality of life is determined by its activities.”

“For that which has become habitual, becomes as it were natural.”

“Wicked men obey out of fear. good men, out of love”

“Nature operates in the shortest way possible.”

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”

“The seat of the soul and the control of voluntary movement - in fact, of nervous functions in general, - are to be sought in the heart. The brain is an organ of minor importance.”

“The best way to teach morality is to make it a habit with children.”

“A good character carries with it the highest power of causing a thing to be believed.”

“Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience.”

“It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.”

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.”

“Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.”

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”

“Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.”

“Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.”

“Happiness is the reward of virtue.”

“While the faculty of sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from it”

“Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.”

“He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.”

“Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

“Friendship is a thing most necessary to life, since without friends no one would choose to live, though possessed of all other advantages.”

“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.”

“Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.”

“The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.”

“Purpose ... is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.”

“The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.”

“Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”

“Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know.”

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

“A man becomes a friend whenever being loved he loves in return.”

“Why is it that all men who are outstanding in philosophy, poetry or the arts are melancholic?”

“The best way to avoid envy is to deserve the success you get.”

“Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them. A true friend is one soul in two bodies”

“Everybody loves a thing more if it has cost him trouble: for instance those who have made money love money more than those who have inherited it.”

“The energy or active exercise of the mind constitutes life.”

“With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”

“There is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom.”

“Money originated with royalty and slavery, it has nothing to do with democracy or the struggle of the empoverished enslaved majority.”

“Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.”

“Well begun is half done.”

“If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.”

“Philosophy is the science which considers truth.”

“It would be wrong to put friendship before the truth.”

“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”

“It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness to others.”

“The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.”

“Meanness is incurable; it cannot be cured by old age, or by anything else.”

“Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.”

“They - Young People have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things - and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning - all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything - they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.”

“The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god.”

“Emotions of any kind can be evoked by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.”

“Metaphysics involves intuitive knowledge of unprovable starting-points concepts and truth and demonstrative knowledge of what follows from them.”

“The end of labor is to gain leisure.”

“The science that studies the supreme good for man is politics.”

“The ultimate end...is not knowledge, but action. To be half right on time may be more important than to obtain the whole truth too late.”

“Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.”

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

“When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.”

“We are the sum of our actions, and therefore our habits make all the difference.”

“Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them.”

“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.”

“Peace is more difficult than war.”

“Those whose days are consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolties of fashion, unobservant of nature's lovelinessof demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.”

“Virtue means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for the right purpose. Thus, to give money away is quite a simple task, but for the act to be virtuous, the donor must give to the right person, for the right purpose, in the right amount, in the right manner, and at the right time.”

“Injustice results as much from treating unequals equally as from treating equals unequally.”

“Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.”

“In the works of Nature, purpose, not accident, is the main thing.”

“We do not know a truth without knowing its cause.”

“So we must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions.”

“Happiness is the utilization of one's talents along lines of excellence.”

“People do not naturally become morally excellent or practically wise. They become so, if at all, only as the result of lifelong personal and community effort.”

“Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge.”

“He who sees things grow from the beginning will have the best view of them.”

“He who hath many friends hath none.”

“Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.”

“The physician himself, if sick, actually calls in another physician, knowing that he cannot reason correctly if required to judge his own condition while suffering.”

“Purpose is a desire for something in our own power, coupled with an investigation into its means.”

“It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.”

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

“No man of high and generous spirit is ever willing to indulge in flattery; the good may feel affection for others, but will not flatter them.”

“Yellow-colored objects appear to be gold”

“Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.”

“Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.”

“Time is the measurable unit of movement concerning a before and an after.”

“Plato is my friend, but truth is a better friend.”

“The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.”

“In bad or corrupted natures the body will often appear to rule over the soul, because they are in an evil and unnatural condition. At all events we may firstly observe in living creatures both a despotical and a constitutional rule; for the soul rules the body with a despotical rule, whereas the intellect rules the appetites with a constitutional and royal rule. And it is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful.”

“You are what you do repeatedly.”

“That which is impossible and probable is better than that which is possible and improbable.”

“We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.”

“The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.”

“To love someone is to identify with them.”

“Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes.”

“All men by nature desire knowledge.”

“A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government, an oligarchy when control lies with the rich and better-born, these being few.”

“He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.”

“If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out.”

“Patience s bitter, but it's fruit is sweet.”

“Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.”

“He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.”

“No state will be well administered unless the middle class holds sway.”

“Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime.”

“There is more evidence to prove that saltness [of the sea] is due to the admixture of some substance, besides that which we have adduced. Make a vessel of wax and put it in the sea, fastening its mouth in such a way as to prevent any water getting in. Then the water that percolates through the wax sides of the vessel is sweet, the earthy stuff, the admixture of which makes the water salt, being separated off as it were by a filter.”

“Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.”

“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”

“Evil draws men together.”

“A person's life persuades better than his word.”

“There is nothing grand or noble in having the use of a slave, in so far as he is a slave; or in issuing commands about necessary things. But it is an error to suppose that every sort of rule is despotic like that of a master over slaves, for there is as great a difference between the rule over freemen and the rule over slaves as there is between slavery by nature and freedom by nature . .”

“All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.”

“Female cats are very Lascivious, and make advances to the male.”

“My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.”

“Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.”

“The greatest threat to the state is not faction but distraction”

“One citizen differs from another, but the salvation of the community is the common business of them all. This community is the constitution; the virtue of the citizen must therefore be relative to the constitution of which he is a member.”

“Saying the words that come from knowledge is no sign of having it.”

“Youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad, and especially to things which suggest vice or hate. When the five years have passed away, during the two following years they must look on at the pursuits which they are hereafter to learn. There are two periods of life with reference to which education has to be divided, from seven to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age of one and twenty.”

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.”

“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development”

“Knowing what is right does not make a sagacious man.”

“Men become richer not only by increasing their existing wealth but also by decreasing their expenditure.”

“Philosophy begins with wonder.”

“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”

“Education and morals make the good man, the good statesman, the good ruler.”

“The actuality of thought is life.”

“The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin.”

“All learning is derived from things previously known.”

“Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.”

“The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.”

“God and nature create nothing that does not fulfill a purpose”

“It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized.”

“The complete man must work, study and wrestle.”

“A man is his own best friend; therefore he ought to love himself best.”

“Good moral character is not something that we can achieve on our own. We need a culture that supports the conditions under which self-love and friendship flourish.”

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”

“Excellence is not an art. It is the habit of practice.”

“Nothing is what rocks dream about”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself.”

“And yet the true creator is necessity, which is the mother of invention.”

“It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.”

“Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.”

“Let us first understand the facts and then we may seek the cause.”

“All men seek one goal: success or happiness.”

“What we expect, that we find.”

“The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought....The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.”

“Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it.”

“For good is simple, evil manifold.”

“When you ask a dumb question, you get a smart answer.”

“Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.”

“It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.”

“We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends behave to us”

“Even that some people try deceived me many times ... I will not fail to believe that somewhere, someone deserves my trust.”

“No one who desires to become good will become good unless he does good things.”

“Although it may be difficult in theory to know what is just and equal, the practical difficulty of inducing those to forbear who can, if they like, encroach, is far greater, for the weaker are always asking for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none of these things.”

“The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.”

“We are what we do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

“Wit is well-bred insolence.”

“Our youth should also be educated with music and physical education.”

“Speech is the representation of the mind, and writing is the representation of speech.”

“And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.”

“Friends enhance our ability to think and act.”

“All men are alike when asleep.”

“The character which results from wealth is that of a prosperous fool.”

“Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.”

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”