Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace.

Excellence is not an art. It is the habit of practice.

The society that loses its grip on the past is in danger, for it produces men who know nothing but the present, and who are not aware that life had been, and could be, different from what it is.

Tragedy is an imitation not of men but of a life, an action

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.

Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.