Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Hope is a waking dream.

Praise invariably implies a reference to a higher standard.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

When we look at the matter from another point of view, great caution would seem to be required. For the habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil, and, when the advantage is small, some errors both of lawgivers and rulers had better be left; the citizen will not gain so much by making the change as he will lose by the habit of disobedience.