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

The soul is characterized by these capacities; self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and movement.

Of actions some aim at what is necessary and useful, and some at what is honorable. And the preference given to one or the other class of actions must necessarily be like the preference given to one or other part of the soul and its actions over the other; there must be war for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things useful and necessary for the sake of things honorable.

If men are given food, but no chastisement nor any work, they become insolent.

For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.

Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training, to be among the most god-like things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something god-like and blessed.

Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.