ARISTOTLE QUOTES X

Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

ARISTOTLE

The Nicomachean Ethics


Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

ARISTOTLE

Politics


Now ends clearly differ from one another. For, firstly, in some cases the end is an act, while in others it is a material result beyond and besides that act. And, where the action involves any such end beyond itself, this end is of necessity better than is the act by which it is produced.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics


A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: beginning


Money, or its equivalents, are essential in war as well as in peace.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: money


The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of creatures; and through imitation he learns his earliest lessons.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: happiness


The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is often true.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: character


If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.

ARISTOTLE

Metaphysics

Tags: God


By plot, I here mean the arrangement of the incidents.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


Beauty is the gift from God.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: beauty


It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric

Tags: law


To learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: learning


Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: poetry


The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: life


Abstract accuracy is no more to be expected in all philosophic treatises than in all products of art, and noble and just acts with which the art political is concerned admit of such great variation and of so many differences that they have been held to depend upon conventional rather than upon real distinctions.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics


Man delights in society far more than do bees or herds.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: society


Dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: dance


Nothing can be truly just which is inconsistent with humanity.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: humanity