Happiness belongs to the self sufficient.

It is no easy task to be good.

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.

There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.

To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.

The greatest of all pleasures is the pleasure of learning.

In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.