Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.

If the poor, for example, because they are more in number, divide among themselves the property of the rich,- is not this unjust? . . this law of confiscation clearly cannot be just.

All men, or most men, wish what is noble but choose what is profitable; and while it is noble to render a service not with an eye to receiving one in return, it is profitable to receive one. One ought therefore, if one can, to return the equivalent of services received, and to do so willingly; for one ought not to make a man one's friend if one is unwilling to return his favors.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.

Before you heal the body you must first heal the mind