There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

It seems that ambition makes most people wish to be loved rather than to love others.

These, then, are the four kinds of royalty. First the monarchy of the heroic ages; this was exercised over voluntary subjects, but limited to certain functions; the king was a general and a judge, and had the control of religion The second is that of the barbarians, which is a hereditary despotic government in accordance with law. A third is the power of the so-called Aesynmete or Dictator; this is an elective tyranny. The fourth is the Lacedaemonian, which is in fact a generalship, hereditary and perpetual.

Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.

We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.

If then nature makes nothing without some end in view, nothing to no purpose, it must be that nature has made all of them for the sake of man.

We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.