Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
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
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
ARISTOTLE
The 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
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
Money, or its equivalents, are essential in war as well as in peace.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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
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
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
Beauty is the gift from God.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
To learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
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
By plot, I here mean the arrangement of the incidents.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Man delights in society far more than do bees or herds.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
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
Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.
ARISTOTLE
letter to Alexander on the policy toward the Cities