Quotes from Aristotle

To die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a cowrd; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil

Now since shame is a mental picture of disgrace, in which we shrink from the disgrace itself and not from its consequences, and we only care what opinion is held of us because of the people who form that opinion, it follows that the people before whom we feel shame are those whose opinion of us matters to us.

Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions; nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been.

That becomes clear if you try to define the objects and things which supervene in each class. Odd and even, straight and curved, number, line, and shape can be defined without change but flesh, bone, and man cannot. They are like sbub nose, not like curved.

Het geluk behoort toe aan de tevredenen

Any polis which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness. Otherwise, political association sinks into a mere alliance.

Piety requires us to honour truth above our friends.

Adventure is worthwhile.

We shall learn the qualities of governments in the same way as we learn the qualities of individuals, since they are revealed in their deliberate acts of choice; and these are determined by the end that inspires them.

Happiness then is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world, and these attributes are not severed as in the inscription at Delos- Most noble is that which is justest, and best is health; But pleasantest is it to win what we love.

Happiness, then, extends as far as contemplation, and the more contemplation there is in one's life, the happier one is, not incidentally, but in virtue of the contemplation, since this is honourable in itself. Happiness, therefore, will be some form of contemplation.

All that is done on compulsion is bitterness to the soul.

But in all cases we must guard most carefully against what is pleasant, and pleasure itself, because we are not impartial judges of it.

For this cause also children cannot be happy, for they are not old enough to be capable of noble acts; when children are spoken of as happy, it is in compliment to their promise for the future.

which we call men [Greek: euyvomoves], or say they have

Happiness requires both complete goodness and a complete lifetime.

Being cannot be one in form, though it may be in what it is made of. (Even some of the physicists hold it to be one in the latter way, though not in the former.) Man obviously differs from horse in form, and contraries from each other.

There seems to be in us a sort of affinity to musical modes and rhythms, which makes some philosophers say that the soul is a tuning, others, that it possesses tuning.

Rash men wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them. Brave men are excited at the moment of action, but collected beforehand.

None of the moral virtues is engendered in us by nature, for no natural property can be altered by habit.

The virtues therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive the,. and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.

where the laws are not authoritative demagogues arise. For the populace becomes a monarch when it turns from many into a single composite, since the many are in authority not as particular persons but all together.

He is best of all who of himself conceiveth all things;   Good again is he too who can adopt a good suggestion;   But whoso neither of himself conceiveth nor hearing from   another   Layeth it to heart;—he is a useless man.

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas