We should aim rather at leveling down our desires than leveling up our means.

As to adultery, let it be held disgraceful, in general, for any man or woman to be found in any way unfaithful when they are married, and called husband and wife. If during the time of bearing children anything of the sort occur, let the guilty person be punished with a loss of privileges in proportion to the offense.

They who are to be judges must also be performers.

We must be neither cowardly nor rash but courageous.

We are what we continually do.

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.

The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.