Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing.

Greatness of spirit is to bear finely both good fourtune and bad, honor and disgrace, and not to think highly of luxury or attention or power or victories in contests, and to possess a certain depth and magnitude of spirit.

Nature does nothing in vain.

A human being is a naturally political [animal].

[I]t is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off.

There is no genius who hasn't a touch of insanity.