Greatness of Soul seems therefore to be as it were a crowning ornament of the virtues; it enhances their greatness, and it cannot exist without them. Hence it is hard to be truly great-souled, for greatness of soul is impossible without moral nobility.

Beauty is a gift of God.

Justice is the loveliest and health is the best. but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.

To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men.

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 man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's.

Revolutions are effected in two ways, by force and by fraud.