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Aristotle is famous for having said the following quotes:
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For what is the best choice, for each individual is the highest
it is possible for him to achieve.
-Aristotle
We become just by performing
just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave
action.
-Aristotle
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting
a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing
temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
-Aristotle
For
the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
-Aristotle
All
human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions,
habit, reason, passion, desire.
-Aristotle
Well begun is half done.
-Aristotle
The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection
[Are] that a thing is your own and that it is your only one.
-Aristotle
Most
people would rather give than get affection.
-Aristotle
We praise a
man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also
in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
-Aristotle
Anyone
can become angry -- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the
right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way --
this is not easy.
-Aristotle
At his best, man is the noblest of all
animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
-Aristotle
Personal
beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.
-Aristotle
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.
-Aristotle
Character
is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses
or avoids.
-Aristotle
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors,
but in deserving them.
-Aristotle
A great city is not to be confounded
with a populous one.
-Aristotle
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth,
but a reproach to old age.
-Aristotle
The ideal man bears the accidents
of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
-Aristotle
It
is easy to fly into a passion... anybody can do that, but to be angry with the
right person to the right extent and at the right time and in the right way that
is not easy.
-Aristotle
The beauty of the soul shines out when a man
bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not
feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
-Aristotle
Every
rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal.
-Aristotle
The wise
man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for
which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even
his life -- knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
-Aristotle
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness
that we deserve them.
-Aristotle
What it lies in our power to do, it
lies in our power not to do.
-Aristotle
Education is the best provision for old age.
-Aristotle
The
educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
-Aristotle
The
roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
-Aristotle
Those
who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for
these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
-Aristotle
Education
is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.
-Aristotle
All
who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the
fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
-Aristotle
The beginning
of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures
not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.
-Aristotle
Equality
consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
-Aristotle
The worst
form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
-Aristotle
No
notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
-Aristotle
Excellence
is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have
virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
-Aristotle
Pleasure
in the job puts perfection in the work.
-Aristotle
It is the mark of
an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature
of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of
the truth is possible.
-Aristotle
Cruel is the strife of brothers.
-Aristotle
Democracy
arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal
absolutely.
-Aristotle
Without friends, no one would want to live, even
if he had all other goods.
-Aristotle
Without friends no one would choose
to live.
-Aristotle
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship
is a slow-ripening fruit.
-Aristotle
A true friend is one soul in two
bodies.
-Aristotle
To the query, What is a friend? his reply was A single
soul dwelling in two bodies.
-Aristotle
In poverty and other misfortunes
of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief;
to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime
of life they incite to noble deeds.
-Aristotle
Friendship is essentially
a partnership.
-Aristotle
Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting
two bodies.
-Aristotle
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two
bodies.
-Aristotle
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
-Aristotle
Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if
he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
-Aristotle
First, have
a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary
means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust
all your means to that end.
-Aristotle
It is easy to perform a good
action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
-Aristotle
We
are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
-Aristotle
It
is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth,
and wisdom.
-Aristotle
If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence,
it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.
-Aristotle
Happiness is activity.
-Aristotle
Happiness depends
upon ourselves.
-Aristotle
Happiness is a sort of action.
-Aristotle
Hope
is a waking dream.
-Aristotle
Hope is the dream of a waking man.
-Aristotle
Either
a beast or a god.
-Aristotle
Man is by nature a political animal.
-Aristotle
The
secret to humor is surprise.
-Aristotle
No excellent soul is exempt
from a mixture of madness.
-Aristotle
The virtue of justice consists
in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
-Aristotle
The law is reason,
free from passion.
-Aristotle
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
-Aristotle
We
give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order
that we may have peace.
-Aristotle
It is Homer who has chiefly taught
other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
-Aristotle
The energy
of the mind is the essence of life.
-Aristotle
Wicked men obey from
fear; good men, from love.
-Aristotle
Love is composed of a single soul
inhabiting two bodies.
-Aristotle
No great genius has ever existed without
some touch of madness.
-Aristotle
Memory is the scribe of the soul.
-Aristotle
So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one
is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the
same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.
-Aristotle
The
most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank,
and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable
part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either
of them separate.
-Aristotle
It is better to rise from life as from
a banquet -- neither thirsty nor drunken.
-Aristotle
It's best to rise
from life like a banquet, neither thirsty or drunken.
-Aristotle
Moral
excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts,
temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
-Aristotle
The
moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature.
Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete
formation is the product of habit.
-Aristotle
All men by nature desire
to know.
-Aristotle
Nature does nothing uselessly.
-Aristotle
This
is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it
is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are
their own.
-Aristotle
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure,
but to avoid pain.
-Aristotle
Poetry is finer and more philosophical
than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
-Aristotle
Homer has taught all other poets the are of telling lies
skillfully.
-Aristotle
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of
the science of politics.
-Aristotle
What the statesman is most anxious
to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition
to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
-Aristotle
Probable
impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
-Aristotle
Poverty
is the parent of revolution and crime.
-Aristotle
Praise invariably
implies a reference to a higher standard.
-Aristotle
The generality
of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain
from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its
own foulness.
-Aristotle
For as the interposition of a rivulet, however
small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement
will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else
as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty
and riches.
-Aristotle
Bad men are full of repentance.
-Aristotle
No
one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.
-Aristotle
In
revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interest are at stake.
-Aristotle
Inferiors
revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior.
Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
-Aristotle
I count
him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the
hardest victory is over self.
-Aristotle
Nor was civil society founded
merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for
otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is
it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial
intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends
to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is
evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that
name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.
-Aristotle
The
soul never thinks without a picture.
-Aristotle
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.
-Aristotle
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears
great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness
of mind.
-Aristotle
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is
the power of teaching.
-Aristotle
Great men are always of a nature originally
melancholy.
-Aristotle
The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.
-Aristotle
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied
later a thousandfold.
-Aristotle
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still
is truth.
-Aristotle
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
-Aristotle
Of
all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
-Aristotle
The
greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
-Aristotle
Wit
is educated insolence.
-Aristotle
Melancholy men are of all others the
most witty.
-Aristotle
It was through the feeling of wonder that men
now and at first began to philosophize.
-Aristotle
To write well, express
yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men
do, but speak as the common people do.
-Aristotle
The young are permanently
in a state resembling intoxication.
-Aristotle
They [Young People] have
exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary
limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal
to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather
do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling
than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively
and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and
the same with everything else.
-Aristotle
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