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.
It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite.
My best friend is someone who truly wishes me well for my own sake.
The angry man wishes the object of his anger to suffer in return; hatred wishes its object not to exist.
Man, as an originator of action, is a union of desire and intellect.
A man's happiness consists in the free exercise of his highest faculties.
A promise made must be a promise kept.
The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.
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.
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.
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.
We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.
Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.
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.
I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.
Gentleness is the ability to bear reproaches and slights with moderation, and not to embark on revenge quickly, and not to be easily provoked to anger, but be free from bitterness and contentiousness, having tranquility and stability in the spirit.
Conscientious and careful physicians allocate causes of disease to natural laws, while the ablest scientists go back to medicine for their first principles.
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.
The purpose of the present study is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of knowledge, we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it. For that reason, it becomes necessary to examine the problem of our actions and to ask how they are to be performed. For as we have said, the actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
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.
Indeed, we may go further and assert that anyone who does not delight in fine actions is not even a good man.
Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.
