Aristotle Quotes
-
The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.
-
A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.
-
And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action. And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.
-
Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience.
-
Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.
-
We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends behave to us.
-
It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
-
Beauty is the gift of God.
-
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
-
Every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice.
-
Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.
-
What we know is not capable of being otherwise; of things capable of being otherwise we do not know, when they have passed outsideour observation, whether they exist or not. Therefore the object of knowledge is of necessity. Therefore it is eternal; for things that are of necessity in the unqualified sense are all eternal; and things that are eternal are ungenerated and imperishable.
-
The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.
-
Hope is a waking dream.
-
It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit.
-
Wickedness is nourished by lust.
-
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
-
People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.
-
The error of Socrates must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and of the state, but in some respects only. For there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at which, without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an inferior state, like harmony passing into unison, or rhythm which has been reduced to a single foot. The state, as I was saying, is a plurality which should be united and made into a community by education.
-
The life of children, as much as that of intemperate men, is wholly governed by their desires.
-
Nature operates in the shortest way possible.
-
All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.
-
All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful.
-
Prayers and sacrifices are of no avail.