Aristotle Quotes
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A good style must have an air of novelty, at the same time concealing its art.
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That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects.
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If 'bounded by a surface' is the definition of body there cannot be an infinite body either intelligible or sensible.
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Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
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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.
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Just as at the Olympic games it is not the handsomest or strongest men who are crowned with victory but the successful competitors, so in life it is those who act rightly who carry off all the prizes and rewards.
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Of ill-temper there are three kinds: irascibility, bitterness, sullenness. It belongs to the ill-tempered man to be unable to bear either small slights or defeats but to be given to retaliation and revenge, and easily moved to anger by any chance deed or word. Ill-temper is accompanied by excitability of character, instability, bitter speech, and liability to take offence at trifles and to feel these feelings quickly and on slight occasions.
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All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world.
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For imitation is natural to man from his infancy. Man differs from other animals particularly in this, that he is imitative, and acquires his rudiments of knowledge in this way; besides, the delight in it is universal.
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Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul...when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.
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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.
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It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.
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We must become just be doing just acts.
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But for those that are equal to have an unequal share and those that are alike an unlike share is contrary to nature, and nothing contrary to nature is noble.
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Anyone, without any great penetration, may distinguish the dispositions consequent on wealth; for its possessors are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence every thing seems to be purchasable by it.
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To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men.
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He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.
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Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
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We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
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Music imitates (represents) the passions or states of the soul, such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites.
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In the perfect state the good man is absolutely the same as the good citizen; whereas in other states the good citizen is only good relatively to his own form of government.
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The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.
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The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
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The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.