ARISTOTLE QUOTES VI

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

Bad men are full of repentance.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: repentance


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

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: youth


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

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: desire


Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


Man is armed with craft and courage, which, untamed by justice, he will most wickedly pervert, and become at once the most impious and the fiercest of monsters.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: monsters


Novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: writing


Whoever, therefore, is unfit to live in a commonwealth, is above or below humanity.

ARISTOTLE

Politics


Be studious to preserve your reputation; if that be once lost, you are like a cancelled writing, of no value, and at best you do but survive your own funeral.

ARISTOTLE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: reputation


There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics


Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: friends


The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: pleasure


To some writers, nothing appears of so much consequence as the skillful regulation of property; because it is this much coveted object that gives birth to most disputes and most seditions.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: property


Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


Every political society forms, it is plain, a sort of community or partnership, instituted for the benefit of the partners. Utility is the end and aim of every such institution; and the greatest and most extensive utility is the aim of that great association, comprehending all the rest, and known by the name of a commonwealth.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: society


Reason ... governs like a just and lawful prince, and the little community of man is thus held together and sustained.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: reason


Were part of the human race to be arrayed in that splendor of beauty which beams from the statues of gods, universal consent would acknowledge the rest of mankind naturally formed to be their slaves.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: beauty


Wealth is clearly not the absolute good of which we are in search, for it is a utility, and only desirable as a means.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: wealth


The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully.

ARISTOTLE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: law


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.

ARISTOTLE

Metaphysics

Tags: math


Change in all things is sweet.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: change