We must be neither cowardly nor rash but courageous.

The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.

What is the highest of all goods achievable by action? ...both the general run of man and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness ...but with regard to what happiness is they differ.

Change in all things is sweet.

Of ill-temper there are three kinds: irascibility, bitterness, sullenness. It belongs to the ill-tempered man to be unable to bear either small slights or defeats but to be given to retaliation and revenge, and easily moved to anger by any chance deed or word. Ill-temper is accompanied by excitability of character, instability, bitter speech, and liability to take offence at trifles and to feel these feelings quickly and on slight occasions.