To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature’s way.
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Any polis which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness. Otherwise, political association sinks into a mere alliance.
With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.
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.
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.
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.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.
To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.
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.
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
The void is ‘not-being,’ and no part of ‘what is’ is a ‘not-being,’; for what ‘is’ in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not ‘one’: on the contrary, it is a ‘many’ infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For 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.
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.
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.