Aristotle Quotes

Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development

Whether we call it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls.

The honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

But what is happiness? If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul.

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.

Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.

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

All art is concerned with coming into being; for it is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature.

It will contribute towards one's object, who wishes to acquire a facility in the gaining of knowledge, to doubt judiciously.

Where your talents and the needs of the world cross; there lies your vocation.

Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue

Of mankind in general, the parts are greater than the whole.

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.

There is more both of beauty and of raison d'etre in the works of nature- than in those of art.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

The sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.

Happiness is activity.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

The souls ability to nourish itself lies in the heart.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

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

If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.

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.

All art is concerned with coming into being.

We can do noble acts without ruling the earth and sea.

As often as we do good, we offer sacrifices to God.

Think as the wise men think, but talk like the simple people do.

For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Dædalus or the tripods of Hephæstus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves.

The soul consists of two parts, one irrational and the other capable of reason. (Whether these two parts are really distinct in the sense that the parts of the body or of any other divisible whole are distinct, or whether though distinguishable in thought as two they are inseparable in reality, like the convex and concave of a curve, is a question of no importance for the matter in hand.)

No one chooses what does not rest with himself, but only what he thinks can be attained by his own act.

The proof that you know something is that you are able to teach it

Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.

It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.

...The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things which are just.

Man first begins to philosophize when the necessities of life are supplied.

When you are lonely, when you feel yourself an alien in the world, play Chess. This will raise your spirits and be your counselor in war

Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.

Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity.

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.

It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia.

In the human species at all events there is a great diversity of pleasures. The same things delight some men and annoy others, and things painful and disgusting to some are pleasant and attractive to others.

There also appears to be another element in the soul, which, though irrational, yet in a manner participates in rational principle.