For contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.

When...we, as individuals, obey laws that direct us to behave for the welfare of the community as a whole, we are indirectly helping to promote the pursuit of happiness by our fellow human beings.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

Men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.

Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.