It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
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.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
The soul never thinks without a picture.
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
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.
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.
We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
Hope is a waking dream.
Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
A friend to all is a friend to none.
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.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
Law is mind without reason.
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.
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.
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
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.