Happiness belongs to the self sufficient.

Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul...when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.

The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.

What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than what they possess in common with others.

So that the lover of myths, which are a compact of wonders, is by the same token a lover of wisdom.

In part, art completes what nature cannot elaborate; and in part it imitates nature.

Of ill-temper there are three kinds: irascibility, bitterness, sullenness. It belongs to the ill-tempered man to be unable to bear either small slights or defeats but to be given to retaliation and revenge, and easily moved to anger by any chance deed or word. Ill-temper is accompanied by excitability of character, instability, bitter speech, and liability to take offence at trifles and to feel these feelings quickly and on slight occasions.