Aristotle Quotes
-
Rising before daylight is also to be commended; it is a healthy habit, and gives more time for the management of the household as well as for liberal studies.
-
A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.
-
The life of theoretical philosophy is the best and happiest a man can lead. Few men are capable of it and then only intermittently. For the rest there is a second-best way of life, that of moral virtue and practical wisdom.
-
The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.
-
Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.
-
A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.
-
That which is excellent endures.
-
Time past, even God is deprived of the power of recalling.
-
We must not feel a childish disgust at the investigations of the meaner animals. For there is something marvelous in all natural things.
-
In seeking for justice men seek for the mean or neutral, for the law is the mean. Again, customary laws have more weight, and relate to more important matters, than written laws, and a man may be a safer ruler than the written law, but not safer than the customary law.
-
Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
-
If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.
-
Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
-
Truth is a remarkable thing. We cannot miss knowing some of it. But we cannot know it entirely.
-
All three states - the Lacedaemonian, the Cretan, and the Carthaginian - nearly resemble one another, and are very different from any others. Many of the Carthaginian institutions are excellent. The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remains loyal to the constitution; the Carthaginians have never had any rebellion worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a tyrant.
-
As often as we do good, we offer sacrifices to God.
-
True happiness comes from gaining insight and growing into your best possible self. Otherwise all you're having is immediate gratification pleasure, which is fleeting and doesn't grow you as a person.
-
Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.
-
Salt water when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form salt water when it condenses again. This I know by experiment. The same thing is true in every case of the kind: wine and all fluids that evaporate and condense back into a liquid state become water. They all are water modified by a certain admixture, the nature of which determines their flavour.
-
God and nature create nothing that does not fulfill a purpose.
-
Today, see if you can stretch your heart and expand your love so that it touches not only those to whom you can give it easily, but also to those who need it so much.
-
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
-
Everything is done with a goal, and that goal is "good."
-
That which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results.