How strange it is that Socrates, after having made the children common, should hinder lovers from carnal intercourse only, but should permit love and familiarities between father and son or between brother and brother, than which nothing can be more unseemly, since even without them love of this sort is improper. How strange, too, to forbid intercourse for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure, as though the relationship of father and son or of brothers with one another made no difference.

A life of wealth and many belongings is only a means to happiness. Honor, power, and success cannot be happiness because they depend on the whims of others, and happiness should be self-contained, complete in itself.

Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.

The appropriate age for marrige is around eighteen and thirty-seven for man

Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss, but that we aim too low and hit.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.