With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.

Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit

For contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.

The soul is characterized by these capacities; self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and movement.

As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.