Aristotle Quotes

Hope is a waking dream.

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

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

Nature does nothing in vain.

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.

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

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

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

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.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.

We cannot learn without pain.

Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.

We make war that we may live in peace.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

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.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire.