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

In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.

It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

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.