It is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.
The cultivation of the intellect is man’s highest good and purest happiness.
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
They are fond of fun and therefore witty, wit being well-bred insolence.
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
A friend to all is a friend to none.
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
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.
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
Justice is the loveliest and health is the best, but the sweetest to obtain is the heart’s desire.
No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
Since to avoid the painful and aim at the pleasurable is one of the most obvious tendencies of human nature.
The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.
The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things… and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.
Whatever lies within our power to do lies also within our power not to do.
All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.
Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.
For this alone is lacking even to God, to make undone the things that have once been done.
He who hath many friends hath none.
It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.
Melancholy men, of all others, are the most witty.
The actuality of thought is life.
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
We acquire a particular quality by acting in a particular way.
Wit is educated insolence.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.
Nature does nothing in vain.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
The deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up.
The nobelest expenditure is that which is made in the Divine Service .
We must not listen to those who advise us ‘being men to think human thoughts, and being mortal to think mortal thoughts’ but must put on immortality as much as possible and strain every nerve to live according to that best part of us, which, being small in bulk, yet much more in its power and honour surpasses all else.
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
Happiness requires both complete goodness and a complete lifetime.
In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Nobody will be afraid who believes nothing can happen to him.
Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.
The greater the number of owners, the less the respect for common property. People are much more careful of their personal possessions than of those owned communally; they exercise care over common property only in so far as they are personally affected.
The soul never thinks without a mental picture.
