The character which results from wealth is that of a prosperous fool.

If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, . . Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

One who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, posseses character worthy of our trust and admiration.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.