Aristotle Quotes

The secret to humor is surprise.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

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

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

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

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Hope is a waking dream.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

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

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

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.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Long-lived persons have one or two lines which extend through the whole hand; short-lived persons have two lines not extending through the whole hand.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Friendship is essentially a partnership.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

The law is reason, free from passion.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.

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.

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

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.