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Virtue and goodness

• It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavour to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.
• One may perhaps be led to suppose that it is virtue that is the end of the statesman’s life. Yet even virtue itself would seem to fall short of being an absolute end.
• All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
• Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.
• One who surpasses his fellow citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself.
• The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
• 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.
• True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
• The good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.
• It must not be supposed that happiness will demand many or great possessions; for self-sufficiency does not depend on excessive abundance, nor does moral conduct, and it is possible to perform noble deeds even without being ruler of land and sea: one can do virtuous acts with quite moderate resources. This may be clearly observed in experience: private citizens do not seem to be less but more given to doing virtuous actions than princes and potentates. It is sufficient then if moderate resources are forthcoming; for a life of virtuous activity will be essentially a happy life.
• Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body.
• Virtue means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for the right purpose. Thus, to give money away is quite a simple task, but for the act to be virtuous, the donor must give to the right person, for the right purpose, in the right amount, in the right manner, and at the right time.

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Character

• Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
• To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought, has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.
• Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids.
• It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.
• Therefore, only an utterly senseless person can fail to know that our characters are the result of our conduct.

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Love

• Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
• No one loves the man whom he fears.
• Love well, be loved and do something of value.
• Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Except are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.

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Knowledge

• All men by nature desire knowledge.
• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
• The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
• Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
• All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.
• The intelligence consists not only in the knowledge but also in the skill to apply the knowledge into practice.
• The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

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Wisdom

• Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.
• It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
• True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
• Everyone honors the wise.
• He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, store it away in his mind, that man is utterly worthless.
• The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.
• The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.

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Truth

• The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
• The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
• The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
• He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, store it away in his mind, that man is utterly worthless.
• For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.
• Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
• Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

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Beauty

• Beauty is the gift of God.
• Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it.
• The beautiful is that which is desirable in itself.

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Justice

• It is in justice that the ordering of society is centred.
• The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
• At his best man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
• Justice is complete virtue in the fullest sense, because it is the active exercise of complete virtue; and it is complete because its possessor can exercise it in relation to another person, and not only by himself.
• Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.
• We must become just by doing just acts.
• 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.

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Action

• Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way… you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
• The quality of life is determined by its activities.
• We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
• Well begun is half done.
• What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
• A man is the origin of his action.
• All human happiness and misery take the form of action.
• In the arena of human life, the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.

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Friendship

• No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
• The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.
• Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
• A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend’s existence makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.
• A friend to all is a friend to none.
• A true friend is one soul divided into two people.
• All friendly feelings toward others come from the friendly feelings a person has for himself.
• Between friends there is no need of justice.
• For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.
• He who hath many friends hath none.
• Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good.
• Man’s best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it.
• Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.
• The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person’s good, wishes it for that person’s own sake.
• When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

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Thinking

• It is impossible even to think without a mental picture.
• 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.
• It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
• The soul can not think without a picture.
• Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment.

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Peace

• It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.

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Awareness

• The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

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Courage

• Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
• You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
• Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.
• Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.
• He is courageous who endures and fears the right thing, for the right motive, in the right way and at the right times.
• The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
• We become brave by doing brave acts.

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Happiness

• Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.
• Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
• Happiness is a state of activity.
• 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.
• 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.
• True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
• 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.
• All human happiness and misery take the form of action.
• And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.
• Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.
• Happiness depends upon ourselves.
• Happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect goodness.
• Happiness is the reward of virtue.
• Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
• 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.

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Pleasure

• Life does not need pleasure to be added to it as an appendage, but contains pleasure in itself.
• Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
• Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.
• The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
• The fact that all animals and men pursue pleasure is some indication that it is in some way the highest good.
• Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.
• Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.
• The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.

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Moderation

• For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one’s strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases or preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues… This much then, is clear: in all our conduct, it is the mean that is to be commended.
• It is better to rise from life as from a banquet – neither thirsty nor drunken.
• Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.
• The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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Excellence

• Excellence is an art won by training and habituation…   We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
• Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
• 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.
• No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
• Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
• These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions … The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.
• With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
• Excellence or virtue in a man will be the disposition which renders him a good man and also which will cause him to perform his function well.
• The excellence of a thing is related to its proper function.
• There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly, there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.

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Habit

• Excellence is an art won by training and habituation…   We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
• It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
• It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
• 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.
• In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence, we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.
• It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit.
• The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference.

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Friendship

• 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.
• Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.

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Learning and education

• For the things, we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
• Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.
• Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.
• Learning is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain.
• Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
• What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
• A true disciple shows his appreciation by reaching further than his teacher.
• All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
• Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.
• Education is the best provision for old age.
• It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.
• The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought…. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.
• The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
• The greatest of all pleasures is the pleasure of learning.
• Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave.

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Teaching

• The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
• Teachers who educate children deserve more honour than parents who merely gave them birth; for bare life is furnished by the one, the other ensures a good life.
• Teaching is the highest form of understanding.
• The proof that you know something is that you are able to teach it.
• Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honour than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensure a good life.

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Law

• The law is reason free from passion.
• The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
• When…we, as individuals, obey laws that direct us to behave for the welfare of the community as a whole, we are indirectly helping to promote the pursuit of happiness by our fellow human beings.
• At his best man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
• Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them.
• Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

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Synergy

• The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
• The totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts.

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Equality

• The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
• If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
• Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.
• The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
• Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
• There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.

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Democracy

• If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
• Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.
• It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.
• The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.
• The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
• The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
• Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.
• A government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.
• Because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government. Hence arises the common opinion that there are two kinds of government – democracy and oligarchy.
• Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
• Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers.
• Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
• A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange…. Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.
• In a democracy, the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
• No state will be well administered unless the middle class holds sway.
• The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.
• When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.

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Intuition

• Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge.
• Happiness itself is sufficient excuse. Beautiful things are right and true; so beautiful actions are those pleasing to the gods. Wise men have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a man’s own breast. Trust thyself.

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Reason

• Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.

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Hope

• Hope is a waking dream.

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Gentleness

• 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 tranquillity and stability in the spirit.

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Humour

• Humour is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
• The secret to humour is surprise.

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Dignity

• Dignity does not consist in possessing honours, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.

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Unity

• Find the good. Seek the unity. Ignore the divisions among us.

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Purpose

• Purpose is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.
• Purpose is a desire for something in our own power, coupled with an investigation into its means.
• Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
• God and nature create nothing that does not fulfil a purpose.

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Forgiveness

• The high-minded man does not bear grudges, for it is not the mark of a great soul to remember injuries, but to forget them.

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Kindness and service

• It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness to others.
• The ideal man takes joy in doing favours for others.
• The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society.

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Developing talent

• Nature does nothing in vain. Therefore, it is imperative for persons to act in accordance with their nature and develop their latent talents, in order to be content and complete.
• Where your talents and the needs of the world cross; there lies your vocation.

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Anger

• 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.
• He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.

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Excessive desire

• Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
• I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
• It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
• Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.
• Bad people…are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.
• Justice is the loveliest and health is the best. but the sweetest to obtain is the heart’s desire.
• The life of children, as much as that of intemperate men, is wholly governed by their desires.

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Evils

• Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.
• No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
• Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
• We must as second best…take the least of the evils.
• A bad man can do a million times more harm than a beast.
• We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.

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Lies

• The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand-fold.
• Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

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Fear

• Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
• He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.
• Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.
• No one loves the man whom he fears.

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Envy

• 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.
• The best way to avoid envy is to deserve the success you get.

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Criticism

• Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

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Pain

• Pain upsets and destroys the nature of the person who feels it.
• Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
• The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
• We can’t learn without pain.

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Misfortune

• The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of the circumstances.
• The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.
• Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
• 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 light of the day is followed by night, as a shadow follows a body.
• But nevertheless, even in these misfortunes, nobility of the soul is conspicuous, when a man bears and digests many and great misfortunes, not from insensibility, but because he is high spirited and magnanimous. But if the energies are the things that constitute the bliss or the misery of life, as we said, no happy man can ever become miserable.

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Flattery

• A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

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Poverty

• Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

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Tyranny

• The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.
• It is also in the interests of a tyrant to make his subjects poor, so that he may be able to afford the cost of his bodyguard, while the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.
• Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.
• Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favourite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.
• Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action…

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Goals

• 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.
• Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
• All men seek one goal: success or happiness.
• It concerns us to know the purposes we seek in life, for then, like archers aiming at a definite mark, we shall be more likely to attain what we want.

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Nature

• In all things of nature there is something of the marvellous.
• If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature’s way.
• Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be.

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Philosophy

• I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
• It was through the feeling of wonder that people now and at first began to philosophize.
• Philosophy is the science which considers truth.
• The life of theoretical philosophy is the best and happiest a man can lead. Few men are capable of it and then only intermittently. For the rest, there is a second-best way of life, that of moral virtue and practical wisdom.
• A man who examines each subject from a philosophical standpoint cannot neglect them: he has to omit nothing, and state the truth about each topic.
• It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too.

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Speech and persuasion

• A speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with Pathos (i.e., their emotion.)
• Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.
• In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
• In general, what is written must be easy to read and easy to speak; which is the same.
• It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.
• Speech is the representation of the mind, and writing is the representation of speech.
• The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.

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Human nature

• All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
• Meanness is more ingrained in man’s nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.
• All men seek one goal: success or happiness.
• Between husband and wife, friendship seems to exist by nature, for man is naturally disposed to pairing.
• Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.
• Nature of man is not what he was born as, but what he is born for.

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Mind, Body, Soul

• The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
• A change in the shape of the body creates a change in the state of the soul.
• Before you heal the body, you must first heal the mind.
• It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality.
• The essential nature (concerning the soul) cannot be corporeal, yet it is also clear that this soul is present in a particular bodily part, and this one of the parts having control over the rest (heart).
• While the faculty of sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from it.

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Success

• One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one, which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed.
• The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society.

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Wealth

• Men become richer not only by increasing their existing wealth but also by decreasing their expenditure.

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God

• Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life.
• If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.
• One thing alone not even God can do, to make undone whatever hath been done.

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Politics

• Man is by nature a political animal.

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The heart

• The heart is the perfection of the whole organism. Therefore, the principles of the power of perception and the soul’s ability to nourish itself must lie in the heart.
• And of course, the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all. The correct view is that the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart.
• The seat of the soul and the control of voluntary movement – in fact, of nervous functions in general, – are to be sought in the heart. The brain is an organ of minor importance.
• Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

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Leadership

• He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.
• He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
• He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

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Art

• The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance.
• Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish. The artist gives us knowledge of nature’s unrealized ends.
• Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience.
• Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning.
• Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.
• In part, art completes what nature cannot elaborate; and in part it imitates nature.

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Youth

• The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things—and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning…. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything; they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.
• Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.
• Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope.
• A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end that is aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character.
• Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

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Tragedy

• A tragedy is that moment where the hero comes face to face with his true identity.
• A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.
• A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action … with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

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Music

• Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul…when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued with the same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.
• Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.
• Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.
• Belief
• Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief.

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Poetry

• Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.
• Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
• The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.
• Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.

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More thoughts

• Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.
• A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
• A line is not made up of points. … In the same way, time is not made up parts considered as indivisible ‘nows.’
• Obstinate people can be divided into the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.
• There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.
• What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.
• A common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.
• Every science and every inquiry, and similarly every activity and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.
• For what is the best choice for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.
• But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.
• If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.
• It is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why anyone should have a knowledge of it.
• Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved.
• Self-sufficiency is both a good and an absolute good.
• The man who is content to live alone is either a beast or a god.
• The senses are gateways to the intelligence. There is nothing in the intelligence which did not first pass through the senses.
• The single harmony produced by all the heavenly bodies singing and dancing together springs from one source and ends by achieving one purpose, and has rightly bestowed the name not of “disordered” but of “ordered universe” upon the whole.
• The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.
• The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
• The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul.
• When we deliberate it is about means and not ends.

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