Quotes About Philosophy

good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing. The end of all action, individual or collective, is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

a poet must be a composer of plots rather than of verses

the first principle of all action is leisure.

the actuality of thought is life

Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.

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.

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.

Hence while in respect of its substance and the definition that states what it really is in essence virtue is the observance of the mean, in point of excellence and rightness it is an extreme.

There is one end we all have – not in virtue of being rational, but simply in virtue of being human being – and that is happiness.

Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul

As for the life of money-making, it is one of constraint, and wealth manifestly is not the good we are seeking, because it is for use, that is, for the sake of something further:

The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the philosophy of human affairs; but more frequently Political or Social Science.

Life in accordance with intellect is best and pleasantest, since this, more than anything else, constitutes humanity.

By the way, a question is sometimes raised, whether the moral choice or the actions have most to do with Virtue, since it consists in both: it is plain that the perfection of virtuous action requires both: but for the actions many things are required, and the greater and more numerous they are the more.)

good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing.

Not in depraved things, but in those well oriented according to nature, are we to consider what is natural.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

the use of music for intellectual enjoyment in leisure;

The life of active virtue is essentially pleasant.

Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.

Happiness also requires external goods in addition.

Again, it is for the sake of the soul that goods external and goods of the body are eligible at all, and all wise men ought to choose them for the sake of the soul, and not the soul for the sake of them.

Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean