...The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.

In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids.

For imitation is natural to man from his infancy. Man differs from other animals particularly in this, that he is imitative, and acquires his rudiments of knowledge in this way; besides, the delight in it is universal.

Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.

Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, . . Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.