The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin.

Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. If he finds himself an individual who cannot live in society, or who pretends he has need of only his own resources do not consider him as a member of humanity; he is a savage beast or a god.

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

For imagining lies within our power whenever we wish . . . but in forming opinons we are not free . . .

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

Error is multiform (for evil is a form of the unlimited, as in the old Pythagorean imagery, and good of the limited), whereas success is possible in one way only (which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed - easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it); so this is another reason why excess and deficiency are a mark of vice, and observance of the mean a mark of virtue: Goodness is simple, badness is manifold.