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.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

We make war that we may live in peace.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

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