Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.

Greatness of spirit is to bear finely both good fourtune and bad, honor and disgrace, and not to think highly of luxury or attention or power or victories in contests, and to possess a certain depth and magnitude of spirit.

He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, store it away in his mind, that man is utterly worthless.

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.

Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.

And this lies in the nature of things: What people are potentially is revealed in actuality by what they produce.

Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it.