"Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends."

"Either never, or very seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and energetic ones."

"Yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route."

"The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things."

"No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes."

"There's no chance of their having a conscious glimpse of the truth as long as they refuse to disturb the things they take for granted and remain incapable of explaining them. For if your starting point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question."

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life."

"Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service."

"The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things."

"No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern."

"Justice, although it resembles a mirage, is really concerned with internal rather than external activity, with the true self and its business."

"Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting."

"It is by justice, that we can authenticate a man's value or nullity, the absence of justice, is the absence of what makes him man."

"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."

"The body is the tomb of the soul."

"Most men in power become villains."

"To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.,."

"Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another."

"The people always have some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears, he is a protector."

"A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbor."