"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
"The secret to humor is surprise."
"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
"Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular."
"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well."
"To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man."