Quotes By Aristotle

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

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

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Wit is educated insolence.

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

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.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Well begun is half done.

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.