A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty

Talent is culture with insolence.

The soul is characterized by these capacities; self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and movement.

Happiness depends on ourselves.

. . . Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

The high-minded man does not bear grudges, for it is not the mark of a great soul to remember injuries, but to forget them.