Friends

A friend to all is a friend to none.

A man who has many friends, probably has none.

Love is when two bodies share the same soul.

Friendship is essentially a partnership.

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

A great city and a big city, are two different things.

Man's Nature

Man is by nature a political animal.

Great men always surface from depression.

All men, by nature, desire to know.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

Bad men are full of repentance.

Man may be the noblest of all animals, but without law and justice he is the worst.

God and Religion

Men create gods in their own image, in their own form, and in their own mode of life.

Politics

Tyrants usually claim an uncommon devotion to religion.

People will suffer illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing.

People are not likely to move against a ruler if they believe god is on his side.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Democracy is the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects.

Democracy believes that because men are equally free, they are equal.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Democracy gives the poor more power than the rich, because they will always be the majority.

Liberty and equality will be best attained when all people share in government.

One should do without being commanded, what others do only from fear of the law.

Republics decline into democracies. Democracies decline into tyranny.

Nature

All actions are caused by one or more of these: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Great ideas make their appearance in the world many times.

Change in all things is sweet.

If one way is better than another, it is nature's way.

There is something marvelous in all of nature creations.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Work

Beauty is always better than a letter of reference.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

All virtue is summed up by dealing justly.

Anybody can become angry - that is easy.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit.

Youth

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

Education

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

Education is the best provision for old age.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Emotions

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Fear is anticipation of pain before it exists.

Happiness depends on ones point of view.

With beauty and poverty, comes suffering.

Fighting

A man who conquers his desires is braver than a man who conquers his enemies.

The hardest victories are fought within one's self.

Women are almost always better off showing more affection than she feels.

In poverty, old age and misfortune, true friends are the surest refuge.

Misfortune shows us who our true friends.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

It is unbecoming for the young to speak of truth.

We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Most people would rather get than get affection.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Nobody is exempt from some mixture of madness.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

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

It is not possible to love someone you fear.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Beauty is always better than a letter of reference.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself.

A Politicians nature is to seek power, glory, or happiness.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.

The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

The law is reason, free from passion.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire- the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale - and that alone can guide.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

The secret to humor is surprise.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

To the query, ''What is a friend?'' his reply was ''A single soul dwelling in two bodies.''

Tragedy is thus a representation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself and of some amplitude... by means of pity and fear bringing about the purgation of such emotions.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action. We make war that we may live in peace.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

Well begun is half done.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Wit is educated insolence.