Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace.

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.

The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants.

How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms

Nature does nothing in vain.

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing.

There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, and perceiving. Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something which is.