All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it’s almost impossible to stamp out.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.