Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
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
The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Communities could not subsist without foresight to discern, as well as exertion to effectuate the measures requisite for their safety. Men capable of discerning those measures, are made for authority; and men merely capable of effectuating them by bodily labor, are made for obedience.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Beauty is the gift from God.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Men fancy that because doing wrong is in their own power, therefore to be just is easy. But it is not so: to lie with one's neighbour's wife, and to strike some one near, and the giving with the hand the bribe ... are easy acts, and in men's own power; but to do these things with the particular disposition is neither easy nor in their power.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Kings ought to differ from their subjects, not in kind, but in perfection.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
ARISTOTLE
The Nicomachean Ethics
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
Money, or its equivalents, are essential in war as well as in peace.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Now there are two ways in which fire outside the body can, as we see, come to an end, namely, exhaustion and extinction. By exhaustion we mean that termination which is produced by the fire itself; by extinction, that which is produced by the contraries of fire.
ARISTOTLE
On Youth & Old Age, Life & Death
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
Concerning things which exist or will exist inevitably, or which cannot possibly exist or take place, no counsel can be given.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
A citizen is a constituent part of a whole or system, which invests him with powers and qualifies him for functions, for which, in his individual capacity, he is totally unfit; and independently of which system, he might subsist indeed as a solitary savage, but could never attain that improved and happy state to which his progressive nature invariably tends.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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
Dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Discontents arise not merely from the inequality of possessions, but from the equality of honors. The multitude complain that property is unjustly, because unequally, distributed; men of superior merit or superior pretentions complain that honors are unjustly, if equally, distributed.
ARISTOTLE
Politics