Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.
The good is the beautiful.
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.
There is no harm in repeating a good thing.
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.
The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.
He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.