Aristotle Quotes
-
One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one, which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed.
-
Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.
-
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.
-
Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.
-
We ought, so far as it lies within our power, to aspire to immortality, and do all that we can to live in conformity with the highest that is within us; for even if it is small in quantity, in power and preciousness, it far excels all the rest.
-
Our account does not rob the mathematicians of their science... In point of fact they do not need the infinite and do not use it.
-
The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause and source have many senses. But the soul is the cause of its body alike in all three senses which we explicitly recognize. It is (a) the source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the essence of the whole living body.
-
The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
-
Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.
-
It has been handed down in mythical form from earliest times to posterity, that there are gods, and that the divine (Deity) compasses all nature. All beside this has been added, after the mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, and for the interests of the laws, and the advantage of the state.
-
Music imitates (represents) the passions or states of the soul, such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites.
-
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 the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.
-
We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement - each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.
-
Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance. ... And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which it has.
-
Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs.
-
A period may be defined as a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance.
-
Anybody can get hit over the head.
-
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.
-
Where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up.
-
Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.
-
The End is included among goods of the soul, and not among external goods.
-
No democracy can exist unless each of its citizens is as capable of outrage at injustice to another as he is of outrage at unjustice to himself.
-
Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.