Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.
Aristotle
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
Aristotle
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
Aristotle
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
Aristotle
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.
Aristotle
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
Aristotle
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
Aristotle
Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
Aristotle
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
Aristotle
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.
Aristotle
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.
Aristotle
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
Aristotle
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Aristotle
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
Aristotle
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.
Aristotle