Aristotle Quotes
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No one praises happiness as one praises justice, but we call it a 'blessing,' deeming it something higher and more divine than things we praise.
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The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.
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There is also a doubt as to what is to be the supreme power in the state: - Is it the multitude? Or the wealthy? Or the good? Or the one best man? Or a tyrant?
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Hence both women and children must be educated with an eye to the constitution, if indeed it makes any difference to the virtue of a city-state that its children be virtuous, and its women too. And it must make a difference, since half the free population are women, and from children come those who participate in the constitution.
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Tragedy is an imitation not of men but of a life, an action.
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Man is the metre of all things, the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms.
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But is it just then that the few and the wealthy should be the rulers? And what if they, in like manner, rob and plunder the people, - is this just?
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Although it may be difficult in theory to know what is just and equal, the practical difficulty of inducing those to forbear who can, if they like, encroach, is far greater, for the weaker are always asking for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none of these things.
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Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.
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Metaphysics involves intuitive knowledge of unprovable starting-points concepts and truth and demonstrative knowledge of what follows from them.
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Earthworms are the intenstines of the soil.
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If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence.
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We ought to be able to persuade on opposite sides of a question; as also we ought in the case of arguing by syllogism: not that we should practice both, for it is not right to persuade to what is bad; but in order that the bearing of the case may not escape us, and that when another makes an unfair use of these reasonings, we may be able to solve them.
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The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.
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This world is inescapably linked to the motions of the worlds above. All power in this world is ruled by these options.
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Female cats are very Lascivious, and make advances to the male.
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...in this way the structure of the universe- I mean, of the heavens and the earth and the whole world- was arranged by one harmony through the blending of the most opposite principles.
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If something's bound to happen, it will happen.. Right time, right erson, and for the best reason.
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And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.
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So we must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions. Those who contribute most to this kind of association are for that very reason entitled to a larger share in the state than those who, though they may be equal or even superior in free birth and in family, are inferior in the virtue that belongs to a citizen. Similarly they are entitled to a larger share than those who are superior in riches but inferior in virtue.
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The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.
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For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
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It is possible to fail in many ways . . . while to succeed is possible only in one way, for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult - to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult.
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Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.