When you are lonely, when you feel yourself an alien in the world, play Chess. This will raise your spirits and be your counselor in war.
When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.
Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.
A change in the shape of the body creates a change in the state of the soul.
Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.
Actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.
There is nothing strange in the circle being the origin of any and every marvel.
It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too.
The business of every art is to bring something into existence, and the practice of an art involves the study of how to bring into existence something which is capable of having such an existence and has its efficient cause in the maker and not in itself.
And it is characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes family and a state.
The greatest thing in style is to have a command of metaphor.
God has many names, though He is only one Being.
No one finds fault with defects which are the result of nature.
A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything.
Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.
Happiness is the utilization of one’s talents along lines of excellence.
Business or toil is merely utilitarian. It is necessary but does not enrich or ennoble a human life.
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes.
The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing.