A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.
By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents
He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
Long-lived persons have one or two lines which extend through the whole hand; short-lived persons have two lines not extending through the whole hand.
Nothing is what rocks dream about.
Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.
The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
To perceive is to suffer.
Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.
All men by nature desire to know.
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.
For what is the best choice, for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life.
Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.
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.
The man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient, is no part of the polis, and must therefore be either a beast or a god.
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
We become brave by doing brave acts.
Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating.
Anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
Happiness belongs to the self sufficient.
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place.
Well begun is half done.
A straight nose is the most beautiful, but one that deviates from being straight and tends toward being hooked or snub can nevertheless still be beautiful to look at. Yet if it is tightened still more toward the extreme, the part will first be thrown out of due proportion, and in the end it will cease to look like a nose at all, because it has too much of one and too little of the other of these opposites.
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
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.
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.
In speaking about someone’s character, we do not say that he is wise or comprehending, but that he is gentle or moderate.
Nothing moves without having been moved.
Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know.
The virtues therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive the,. and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
