Anyone can give … but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, and with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.
“The soul never thinks without an image.”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Wit is educated insolence.
The gods too are fond of a joke.
If it is a disgrace when a man cannot defend himself in a bodily way, it would seem odd not to think him disgraced when he cannot defend himself with reason...
We are what repeatedly do, Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then , is not an act, but a habit.
A friend to all is a friend to none
“The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold.”
All advice to do things or not to do them is concerned with happiness, and with the things that make for or against it; whatever creates or increases happiness or some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do.
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
“For such a man, (an extreme skeptic who believes knowledge is impossible on any level), as such, is from the start no better than a vegetable.”
“When I assert that that which is, is, or that that which is not, is not, my assertion is true. When I assert that that which is, is not, or that that which is not, is, my assertion is false.”
“All advice to do things or not to do them is concerned with happiness, and with the things that make for or against it; whatever creates or increases happiness or some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do.”
Such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have "eaten salt together"; nor, can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each..
For instance, it is thought that justice is equality, and so it is, though not for everybody but only for those who are equals; and it is thought that inequality is just, for so indeed it is, though not for everybody, but for those who are unequal.
In poverty as well as in other misfortunes, people suppose that friends are their only refuge. And friendship is a help to the young, in saving them from error, just as it is also to the old, with a view to the care they require and their diminished capacity for action stemming from their weakness; it is a help also to those in their prime in performing noble actions, for ‘two going together’ are better able to think and to act.
The only way to avoid criticism: say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
“Evil destroys even itself, and if it is complete becomes unbearable.”