The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.
Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.
My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside.
The probable is what usually happens.
We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.
Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.
For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.
Evidence from torture may be considered completely untrustworthy.
Men come together in cities in order to live: they remain together in order to live the good life.
When you ask a dumb question, you get a smart answer.
Self-sufficiency is both a good and an absolute good.
The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.
The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin.
Men are divided between those who are as thrifty as if they would live forever, and those who are as extravagant as if they were going to die the next day.
It would be wrong to put friendship before the truth.
When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.
Every great genius has an admixture of madness.
The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.
The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate.
Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.