Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.

Happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect goodness

A good character carries with it the highest power of causing a thing to be believed.

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.

But what is happiness? If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul.