Nothing is what rocks dream about

A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must not be mean or above the dignity of the subject. It must be appropriate.

The life of children, as much as that of intemperate men, is wholly governed by their desires.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.

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

Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.