It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Great and frequent reverses can crush and mar our bliss both by the pain they cause and by the hindrance they offer to many activities. Yet nevertheless even in adversity nobility shines through, when a man endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience, not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul.

The structural unity of the parts is such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and dis­turbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference is not an organic part of the whole.

No man of high and generous spirit is ever willing to indulge in flattery; the good may feel affection for others, but will not flatter them.

A gentleman is not disturbed by anything

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.

It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong.