For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.

When you have thrown a stone, you cannot afterwards bring it back again, but nevertheless you are responsible for having taken up the stone and flung it, for the origin of the act was within you. Similarly the unjust and profligate might at the outset have avoided becoming so, and therefore they are so voluntarily, although when they have become unjust and profligate it is no longer open to them not to be so.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

So we must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions.

Some believe it to be just friends wanting, as if to be healthy enough to wish health.

The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.

A man who examines each subject from a philosophical standpoint cannot neglect them: he has to omit nothing, and state the truth about each topic.