Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain.

Everybody loves a thing more if it has cost him trouble: for instance those who have made money love money more than those who have inherited it.

Whether we call it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls.

The argument of Alcidamas: Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day.

For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.

Those who merely possess the goods of fortune may be haughty and insolent; . . . they try to imitate the great-souled man without being really like him, and only copy him in what they can, reproducing his contempt for others but not his virtuous conduct. For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people - his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride.

Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.