"Nothing could be more important than that the work of a soldier is well done."

"Certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden."

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

"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."

"When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them."

"He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act."

"No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong. Only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again."

"Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."

"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."

"Certainly we shall have to look to ourselves, and try to find someone who will help in some way or other to improve us."