Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions. Nature does nothing uselessly. No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it. One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold. Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope. Teaching is the highest form of understanding. The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper. | 
