There is a cropping-time in the races of men, as in the fruits of the field; and sometimes, if the stock be good, there springs up for a time a succession of splendid men; and then comes a period of barrenness.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

Education and morals will be found almost the whole that goes to make a good man.

And yet the true creator is necessity, which is the mother of invention.

Hence both women and children must be educated with an eye to the constitution, if indeed it makes any difference to the virtue of a city-state that its children be virtuous, and its women too. And it must make a difference, since half the free population are women, and from children come those who participate in the constitution.

When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.

If the art of ship-building were in the wood, ships would exist by nature.