For what is the best choice, for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.
View quote | Quotes about Achievement
We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
View quote | Quotes about Action
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
View quote | Quotes about Action
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
View quote | Quotes about Action
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
View quote | Quotes about Action
Well begun is half done.
View quote | Quotes about Action
The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection [Are] that a thing is your own and that it is your only one.
View quote | Quotes about Affection
Most people would rather give than get affection.
View quote | Quotes about Affection
We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
View quote | Quotes about Anger
Anyone can become angry -- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way -- this is not easy.
View quote | Quotes about Anger
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
View quote | Quotes about Animals
Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.
View quote | Quotes about Beauty
Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.
View quote | Quotes about Beauty
Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.
View quote | Quotes about Character
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
View quote | Quotes about Character
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
View quote | Quotes about Cities and City Life
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
View quote | Quotes about Confidence
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
View quote | Quotes about Courage
It is easy to fly into a passion... anybody can do that, but to be angry with the right person to the right extent and at the right time and in the right way that is not easy.
View quote | Quotes about Courage
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.
View quote | Quotes about Courage
Every rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal.
View quote | Quotes about Crime and Criminals
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.
View quote | Quotes about Crisis
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
View quote | Quotes about Dignity
What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
View quote | Quotes about Discipline
Education is the best provision for old age.
View quote | Quotes about Education
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
View quote | Quotes about Education
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
View quote | Quotes about Education
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
View quote | Quotes about Education
Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.
View quote | Quotes about Education
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
View quote | Quotes about Empire
The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.
View quote | Quotes about Equality
Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
View quote | Quotes about Equality
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
View quote | Quotes about Equality
No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
View quote | Quotes about Evil
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
View quote | Quotes about Excellence
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
View quote | Quotes about Excellence
It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.
View quote | Quotes about Excellence
Cruel is the strife of brothers.
View quote | Quotes about Family
Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.
View quote | Quotes about Freedom
Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
Without friends no one would choose to live.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
A true friend is one soul in two bodies.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
To the query, What is a friend? his reply was A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and 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.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
Friendship is essentially a partnership.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
View quote | Quotes about Genius
Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
View quote | Quotes about 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.
View quote | Quotes about Goals
It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
View quote | Quotes about Goodness
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
View quote | Quotes about Habit
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
View quote | Quotes about Habit
If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.
View quote | Quotes about Happiness
Happiness is activity.
View quote | Quotes about Happiness
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
View quote | Quotes about Happiness
Happiness is a sort of action.
View quote | Quotes about Happiness
Hope is a waking dream.
View quote | Quotes about Hope
Hope is the dream of a waking man.
View quote | Quotes about Hope
Either a beast or a god.
View quote | Quotes about Humankind
Man is by nature a political animal.
View quote | Quotes about Humankind
The secret to humor is surprise.
View quote | Quotes about Humor
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
View quote | Quotes about Insanity
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
View quote | Quotes about Justice
The law is reason, free from passion.
View quote | Quotes about Law and Lawyers
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
View quote | Quotes about Leisure
We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.
View quote | Quotes about Leisure
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
View quote | Quotes about Lies and Lying
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
View quote | Quotes about Life and Living
Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.
View quote | Quotes about Love
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
View quote | Quotes about Love
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
View quote | Quotes about Madness
Memory is the scribe of the soul.
View quote | Quotes about Memory
So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.
View quote | Quotes about Men and Women
The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate.
View quote | Quotes about Middle Class
It is better to rise from life as from a banquet -- neither thirsty nor drunken.
View quote | Quotes about Moderation
It's best to rise from life like a banquet, neither thirsty or drunken.
View quote | Quotes about Moderation
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.
View quote | Quotes about Morality
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
View quote | Quotes about Morality
All men by nature desire to know.
View quote | Quotes about Nature
Nature does nothing uselessly.
View quote | Quotes about Nature
This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.
View quote | Quotes about Parents and Parenting
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
View quote | Quotes about Pleasure
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
View quote | Quotes about Poetry and Poets
Homer has taught all other poets the are of telling lies skillfully.
View quote | Quotes about Poetry and Poets
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
View quote | Quotes about Politicians and Politics
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
View quote | Quotes about Politicians and Politics
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
View quote | Quotes about Possibilities
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
View quote | Quotes about Poverty and The Poor
Praise invariably implies a reference to a higher standard.
View quote | Quotes about Praise
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
View quote | Quotes about Punishment
For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.
View quote | Quotes about Rebellion
Bad men are full of repentance.
View quote | Quotes about Repentance
No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.
View quote | Quotes about Responsibility
In revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interest are at stake.
View quote | Quotes about Revolutions and Revolutionaries
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
View quote | Quotes about Revolutions and Revolutionaries
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
View quote | Quotes about Self-control
Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.
View quote | Quotes about Society
The soul never thinks without a picture.
View quote | Quotes about Soul
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.
View quote | Quotes about Soul
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
View quote | Quotes about Suffering
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
View quote | Quotes about Teachers and Teaching
Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.
View quote | Quotes about Temperament
The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.
View quote | Quotes about Tragedies
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
View quote | Quotes about Truth
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
View quote | Quotes about Truth
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
View quote | Quotes about Virtue
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
View quote | Quotes about Virtue
The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
View quote | Quotes about Virtue
Wit is educated insolence.
View quote | Quotes about Wit
Melancholy men are of all others the most witty.
View quote | Quotes about Wit
It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.
View quote | Quotes about Wonder
To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.
View quote | Quotes about Writers and Writing
The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.
View quote | Quotes about Youth
They [Young People] 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.
View quote | Quotes about Youth