Money was established for exchange, but interest causes it to be reproduced by itself. Therefore this way of earning money is greatly in conflict with the natural law.Collection: Law
Moral virtue is a mean . . . between two vices, one of excess and the other of defect; . . . it is such a mean because it aims at hitting the middle point in feelings and in actions. This is why it is a hard task to be good, for it is hard to find the middle point in anything.Collection: Mean
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.Collection: Thinking
Wicked me obey from fear; good men,from love.Collection: Love
The soul of animals is characterized by two faculties, (a) the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and (b) the faculty of originating local movement.Collection: Animal
Every realm of nature is marvelous.Collection: Realms
There also appears to be another element in the soul, which, though irrational, yet in a manner participates in rational principle.Collection: Soul
Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.Collection: Honor
The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.Collection: Science
The virtue as the art consecrates itself constantly to what's difficult to do, and the harder the task, the shinier the success.Collection: Art
Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.Collection: Art
Modesty is hardly to be described as a virtue. It is a feeling rather than a disposition. It is a kind of fear of falling into disrepute.Collection: Fall
For example, justice is considered to mean equality, It does mean equality- but equality for those who are equal, and not for all.Collection: Sad
That which is excellent endures.Collection: Excellent
A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.Collection: Self
The excellence of a thing is related to its proper function.Collection: Philosophy
It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.Collection: Thinking
[this element], the seat of the appetites and of desire in general, does in a sense participate in principle, as being amenable and obedient to itCollection: Soul
Yellow-colored objects appear to be goldCollection: Yellow
The energy or active exercise of the mind constitutes life.Collection: Life
The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.Collection: Math
We have divided the Virtues of the Soul into two groups, the Virtues of the Character and the Virtues of the Intellect.Collection: Character
...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.Collection: Principles
In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.Collection: Character
The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul.Collection: Soul
Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.Collection: Ignorance
Since music has so much to do with the molding of character, it is necessary that we teach it to our children.Collection: Children
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.Collection: Mean
A king ruleth as he ought, a tyrant as he lists, a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.Collection: Kings
A man becomes a friend whenever being loved he loves in return.Collection: Men
With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.Collection: Art
The purpose of art is to represent the meaning of things. This represents the true reality, not external aspects.Collection: Art
By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidentsCollection: Mean
Soul and body, I suggest react sympathetically upon each other. A change in the state of the soul produces a change in the shape of the body and conversely, a change in the shape of the body produces a change in the state of the soul.Collection: Soul And Body
You'll understand what life is if you think about the act of dying. When I die, how will I be different from the way I am right now? In the first moments after death, my body will be scarcely different in physical terms than it was in the last seconds of life, but I will no longer move, no longer sense, nor speak, nor feel, nor care. It's these things that are life. At that moment, the psyche takes flight in the last breath.Collection: Life
There are three qualifications required in those who have to fill the highest offices, - (1) first of all, loyalty to the established constitution; (2) the greatest administrative capacity; (3) virtue and justice of the kind proper to each form of government.Collection: Loyalty
Life is full of chances and changes, and the most prosperous of men may in the evening of his days meet with great misfortunes.Collection: Destiny
Emotions of any kind are produced by melody and rhythm; therefore by music a man becomes accustomed to feeling the right emotions; music has thus the power to form character, and the various kinds of music based on various modes may be distinguished by their effects on character.Collection: Character
Men are marked from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled.Collection: Men
A friend is simply one soul in two bodies.Collection: Two
Women who are with child should be careful of themselves; they should take exercise and have a nourishing diet. The first of these prescriptions the legislator will easily carry into effect by requiring that they should take a walk daily to some temple, where they can worship the gods who preside over birth. Their minds, however, unlike their bodies, they ought to keep quiet, for the offspring derive their natures from their mothers as plants do from earth.Collection: Education
For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.Collection: Determination
A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.Collection: Tragedy
What has soul in it differs from what has not, in that the former displays life. Now this word has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of these is found in a thing we say that thing is living. Living, that is, may mean thinking or perception or local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of plants also as living, for they are observed to possess in themselves an originative power through which they increase or decrease in all spatial directions.Collection: Mean
But is it just then that the few and the wealthy should be the rulers? And what if they, in like manner, rob and plunder the people, - is this just?Collection: Government
To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.Collection: Confusing
A man is the origin of his action.Collection: Men
All things are full of gods.Collection: All Things
In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.Collection: Art