Aristotle Quotations | Page 3

One has no friend who has many friends.

The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.

A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.

...for all men do their acts with a view to achieving something which is, in their view, a good.

A man is his own best friend; therefore he ought to love himself best.

We work to earn our leisure.

The ultimate end...is not knowledge, but action. To be half right on time may be more important than to obtain the whole truth too late.

The principle aim of gymnastics is the education of all youth and not simply that minority of people highly favored by nature.

So the good has been well explained as that at which all things aim.

Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace.

Happiness is self-connectedness.

Injustice results as much from treating unequals equally as from treating equals unequally.

A democracy when put to the strain grows weak, and is supplanted by Oligarchy.

A promise made must be a promise kept.

The souls ability to nourish itself lies in the heart.

The difference between a learned man and an ignorant one is the same as that between a living man and a corpse.

We laugh at that which we cannot bear to face.

The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.

Friendship also seems to be the bond that hold communities together.

In the works of Nature, purpose, not accident, is the main thing.

Friendship is two souls inhabiting one body.

Love well, be loved and do something of value.

Everyone honors the wise.

The best tragedies are conflicts between a hero and his destiny.

Our feelings towards our friends reflect our feelings towards ourselves.

Happiness comes from theperfect practice of virtue.

Money was established for exchange, but interest causes it to be reproduced by itself. Therefore this way of earning money is greatly in conflict with the natural law.

Maybe crying is a means of cleaning yourself out emotionally. Or maybe it's your last resort; the only way to express yourself when words fail, the same as when you were a baby and had no words.

Education and morals make the good man, the good statesman, the good ruler.

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.

Man by nature wants to know.

Character is made by many acts; it may be lost by a single one.

So that the lover of myths, which are a compact of wonders, is by the same token a lover of wisdom.

Worthless persons appointed to have supreme control of weighty affairs do a lot of damage.

He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, store it away in his mind, that man is utterly worthless.

What you have to learn to do, you learn by doing.

The secret to humor is surprise.

The blood of a goat will shatter a diamond.

Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know.

These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions ... The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.

Philosophy can make people sick.

The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.

Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

It's the fastest who gets paid, and it's the fastest who gets laid.

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.

All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.

Only you can take you to Funkytown.

By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents

Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.

Anything whose presence or absence makes no discernible difference is no essential part of the whole.

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.

Melancholy men, of all others, are the most witty.

We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends behave to us

A courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason directs for the sake of what is noble.

The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.

Choice not chance determines your destiny [my family motto...credited to Aristotle]

The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.

With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.

It is likely that unlikely things should happen

Quid quid movetur ab alio movetur"(nothing moves without having been moved).

The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23

Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.

[I]t is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off.

Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.

Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.

Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

To be angry is easy. But to be angry with the right man at the right time and in the right manner, that is not easy.

In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.

Human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting excellence, and if there is more than one sort of excellence, in accordance with the best and most complete.Foroneswallowdoesnot makea summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

We are what we repeatedly do.

Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honour than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensure a good life.

Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever .... Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.

Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them...

Yet the true friend of the people should see that they be not too poor, for extreme povery lowers the character of the democracy; measures therefore should be taken which will give them lasting prosperity; and as this is equally the interest of all classes, the proceeds of the public revenues should be accumulated and distributed among its poor, if possible, in such quantities as may enable them to purchase a little farm, or, at any rate, make a beginning in trade or husbandry.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.

For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.

All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge.

All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.

Fortune favours the bold.

There is a cropping-time in the races of men, as in the fruits of the field; and sometimes, if the stock be good, there springs up for a time a succession of splendid men; and then comes a period of barrenness.

Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises.

If then nature makes nothing without some end in view, nothing to no purpose, it must be that nature has made all of them for the sake of man.

But obviously a state which becomes progressively more and more of a unity will cease to be a state at all. Plurality of numbers is natural in a state; and the farther it moves away from plurality towards unity, the less of a state it becomes and the more a household, and the household in turn an individual.

So we must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions. Those who contribute most to this kind of association are for that very reason entitled to a larger share in the state than those who, though they may be equal or even superior in free birth and in family, are inferior in the virtue that belongs to a citizen. Similarly they are entitled to a larger share than those who are superior in riches but inferior in virtue.

Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.

So it is clear that the search for what is just is a search for the mean; for the law is the mean.

A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it.

...happiness is an activity and a complete utilization of virtue, not conditionally but absolutely.

But since there is but one aim for the entire state, it follows that education must be one and the same for all, and that the responsibility for it must be a public one, not the private affair which it now is, each man looking after his own children and teaching them privately whatever private curriculum he thinks they ought to study.

Justice is the loveliest and health is the best. but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.

The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.

To die in order to avoid the pains of poverty, love, or anything that is disagreeable, is not the part of a brave man, but of a coward.

Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself.

Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy. For he will never do those things which are hateful and petty.

A vivid image compels the whole body to follow.

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.

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

One who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, posseses character worthy of our trust and admiration.