What makes a man a ‘sophist’ is not his faculty, but his moral purpose.
Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your calling.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
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.
It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor… the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.
Through discipline comes freedom.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
And it is a 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 a family and a state.
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.
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.
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.
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.
The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us.
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.
Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
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.
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either.
Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.
Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.
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.
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions; nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been.
Good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing. The end of all action, individual or collective, is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
They who love in excess also hate in excess.
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.
Fame means being respected by everybody, or having some quality that is desired by all men, or by most, or by the good, or by the wise.
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.
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.
