Aristotle Quotes
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For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.
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It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia, while others are products which are additional to the energeia.
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In general, what is written must be easy to read and easy to speak; which is the same.
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This body is not a home, but an inn; and that only for a short time. Seneca Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
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Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.
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The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.
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Property should be in a general sense common, but as a general rule private... In well-ordered states, although every man has his own property, some things he will place at the disposal of his friends, while of others he shares the use of them.
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Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
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Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.
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The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society.
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Since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private - not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.
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For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.
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Happiness is essentially perfect; so that the happy man requires in addition the goods of the body, external goods and the gifts of fortune, in order that his activity may not be impeded through lack of them.
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And inasmuch as the great-souled man deserves most, he must be the best of men; for the better a man is the more he deserves, and he that is best deserves most. Therefore the truly great-souled man must be a good man. Indeed greatness in each of the virtues would seem to go with greatness of soul.
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People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things which are just.
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Therefore the good man ought to be a lover of self, since he will then both benefit himself by acting nobly and aid his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure both himself and his neighbors. With the bad man therefore, what he does is not in accord with what he ought to do, but the good man does what he ought, since intelligence always chooses for itself that which is best, and the good man obeys his intelligence.
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Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body.
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Since we think we understand when we know the explanation, and there are four types of explanation (one, what it is to be a thing; one, that if certain things hold it is necessary that this does; another, what initiated the change; and fourth, the aim), all these are proved through the middle term.
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The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing.
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Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.