ARISTOTLE QUOTES X

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

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


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

ARISTOTLE

Politics


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

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: money


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


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


Kings ought to differ from their subjects, not in kind, but in perfection.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: kings


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


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

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


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

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: life


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

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


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


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


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

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: learning


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

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: poetry


Now, of the various parts or faculties of the soul--whichever may be the proper term by which to designate them--the only ones with which we need now concern ourselves are those which belong to all such living things as possess not only life but animality. For, though an animal must necessarily be a living thing, living things are by no means of necessity animals; for plants live, and yet are without sensation, which is the distinctive characteristic of an animal. And the part in which is lodged that faculty of the soul in virtue of which a thing lives must also be the part in which is lodged that faculty in virtue of which we call it an animal.

ARISTOTLE

On Youth & Old Age, Life & Death

Tags: animals


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