It is possible to fail in many ways . . . while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult - to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult).

Anything whose presence or absence makes no discernible difference is no essential part of the whole.

But the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Talent is culture with insolence.

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.