Even if you must have regard to wealth, in order to secure leisure, yet it is surely a bad thing that the greatest offices, such as those of kings and generals, should be bought. The law which allows this abuse makes wealth of more account than virtue, and the whole state becomes avaricious.

Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.

Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.

Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions — what we do — that we are happy or the reverse.

Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

If the art of ship-building were in the wood, ships would exist by nature.