"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."

"Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold."

"It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought."

"The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more."

"We make war that we may live in peace."

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

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

"...happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement."

"For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all."

"Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life."

"The law is reason, free from passion."

"It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs."

"Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing."

"He who hath many friends hath none."

"Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it."

"The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us."

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

"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."

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."

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

"Life in accordance with intellect is best and pleasantest, since this, more than anything else, constitutes humanity."

"All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established."

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

"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar."

"Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art."

"With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible."

"It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition."

"Man is by nature a political animal."

"Happiness is activity of soul."

"I have gained this by philosophy. I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law."

"All human happiness or misery takes the form of action, the end for which we live is a certain kind of action."

"It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world."

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

"Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing."

"For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first."

"Life is full of chances and changes and the most prosperous of men may ... meet with great misfortunes."

"Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope."

"Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions; nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been."

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

"Learning is not child's play, we cannot learn without pain."

"Fame means being respected by everybody, or having some quality that is desired by all men, or by most, or by the good, or by the wise."

"Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act."

"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."

"Friendship is essentially a partnership."

"Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely."

"It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it."

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

"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire."

"The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend."