I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.
A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.
Long-lived persons have one or two lines which extend through the whole hand; short-lived persons have two lines not extending through the whole hand.
I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.
It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor... the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.
The female is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the catamenia are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul.
Britain has enormous amount of talent, as we've seen from the BAFTAs. It's all here, and it has to be allowed to flourish.
I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
Dear refuge of my weary soul, On thee, when sorrows rise, On thee, when waves of trouble roll, My fainting hope relies.
In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.
A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.
As I walk'd by myself, I talk'd to myself, And myself replied to me; And the questions myself then put to myself, With their answers I give to thee.
There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed; but you may note this fact, that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.
I hate rats. I had a pet rat to try and overcome it. I even gave him mouth-to mouth resuscitation when he had a heart attack. But I couldn't conquer it.
Commodities such as gold and silver have a world market that transcends national borders, politics, religions, and race. A person may not like someone else's religion, but he'll accept his gold.
A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.
