For what is the best choice, for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.

Action

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Affection

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Beauty

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

Courage

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

Discipline

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

Education

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Equality

Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.

Excellence

It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.

Friends and Friendship

A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.

Goodness

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Happiness

Happiness is a sort of action.

Hope

Hope is a waking dream.

Insanity

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Leisure

We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.

Love

Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.

Morality

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Pleasure

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Punishment

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Soul

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Temperament

Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.

Virtue

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Wit

Melancholy men are of all others the most witty.

Youth

They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.