Aristotle
Peace is more difficult than war.Collection: War
The best things are placed between extremes.Collection: Extremes
Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.Collection: Passion
For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements.Collection: Thinking
There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.Collection: Equal Treatment
Love well, be loved and do something of value.Collection: Wells
The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.Collection: Science
They - Young People have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things - and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning - all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything - they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.Collection: Love
The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of the dissimilar.Collection: Perception
Wicked men obey out of fear. good men, out of loveCollection: Men
All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.Collection: Endeavor
The quality of life is determined by its activities.Collection: Life
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.Collection: Witty
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.Collection: Inspirational
Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.Collection: Fashion
Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.Collection: Pain
The body is at its best between the ages of thirty and thirty-five.Collection: Age
Nor need it cause surprise that things disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.Collection: Men
The best tragedies are conflicts between a hero and his destiny.Collection: Hero
The same thing may have all the kinds of causes, e.g. the moving cause of a house is the art or the builder, the final cause is the function it fulfils, the matter is earth and stones, and the form is the definitory formula.Collection: Art
Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.Collection: Perfect
Between friends there is no need of justice.Collection: Friendship
Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.Collection: Rivers
A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.Collection: Truth
The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.Collection: Love
A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end that is aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character.Collection: Passion
Most men appear to think that the art of despotic government is statesmanship, and what men affirm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are not ashamed of practicing towards others; they demand just rule for themselves, but where other men are concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior is irrational; unless the one party is, and the other is not, born to serve, in which case men have a right to command, not indeed all their fellows, but only those who are intended to be subjects; just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food or sacrifice . .Collection: Art
Some men turn every quality or art into a means of making money; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end all things must contribute.Collection: Inspirational
Excellence or virtue in a man will be the disposition which renders him a good man and also which will cause him to perform his function well.Collection: Men
Since we think we understand when we know the explanation, and there are four types of explanation (one, what it is to be a thing; one, that if certain things hold it is necessary that this does; another, what initiated the change; and fourth, the aim), all these are proved through the middle term.Collection: Science
Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.Collection: Mean
No democracy can exist unless each of its citizens is as capable of outrage at injustice to another as he is of outrage at unjustice to himself.Collection: Democracy
In the first place, then, men should guard against the beginning of change, and in the second place they should not rely upon the political devices of which I have already spoken invented only to deceive the people, for they are proved by experience to be useless.Collection: Men
Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .Collection: Quality
We become just by the practice of just actions.Collection: Practice
Those who merely possess the goods of fortune may be haughty and insolent; . . . they try to imitate the great-souled man without being really like him, and only copy him in what they can, reproducing his contempt for others but not his virtuous conduct. For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people - his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride.Collection: Pride
Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them.Collection: Power
All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.Collection: Knowledge
It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.Collection: Nature
Our characters are the result of our conduct.Collection: Character
Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.Collection: Mean
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.Collection: Hands
The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself.Collection: War
We should aim rather at leveling down our desires than leveling up our means.Collection: Mean
Emotions of any kind can be evoked by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.Collection: Inspiration
Friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them, and it is this mirroring that helps them improve themselves as persons.Collection: Motivational
Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.Collection: Pain
The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.Collection: Anger
If men are given food, but no chastisement nor any work, they become insolent.Collection: Work