Quotes from Aristotle

Comedy, as we said, is an imitation of people of a lower sort, though not in respect to every vice; rather, what is ridiculous is part of what is ugly.

not seek for exactness in all matters alike, but in each according to the subject-matter, and so far as properly belongs to the system.

It is a part of probability that many improbabilities will happen.

One who asks the law to rule, therefore, is held to be asking god and intellect alone to rule, while one who asks man adds the beast. Desire is a thing of this sort; and spiritedness perverts rulers and the best men. Hence law is intellect without appetite.

What affirmation and denial are in the case of thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in the case of longing for something.

the laughable is a species of what is disgraceful.

Moderation in all things

When then the law has spoken in general terms, and there arises a case of exception to the general rule, it is proper, in so far as the lawgiver omits the case and by reason of his universality of statement is wrong, to set right the omission by ruling it as the lawgiver himself would rule were he there present, and would have provided by law had he foreseen the case would arise.

It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.

Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise.

Good cannot be a single and universal general notion; if it were, it would not be predictable in all the categories, but only in one.

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.

the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.

For 'activity in conformity with virtue' involves virtue.

A man may possess the disposition without its producing any good result.

He who is a citizen in a democracy will often not be a citizen in an oligarchy.

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

We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learnt it.

Lawgivers make the citizens food by training them in habits of right action - this is the aim of all legislation, and if it fails to do this it is a failure.

A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.

Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.

And in the same spirit should each person receive what we say: for the man of education will seek exactness so far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade instead of proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician.

Civil strife is caused not only by inequality of property, but also by inequality of honors

By the mean of the thing I denote a point equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody.