Democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.

For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other should rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet.

In inventing a model we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.