Quotes About Aristotle

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

Thus, then ... are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation: the medium, the objects, and the manner.

Happiness is a thing which calls for honor rather than for praise.

There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.

For in man, and in man alone, owing to is erect attitude, the upper part of the body is turned toward the upper part of the universe; while in other animals it is turned neither to this nor to the lower aspects, but in a direction midway between the two.

Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.

To those who cite the disreputable sorts of pleasure one may fairly reply that these are not really pleasant. For we ought not, because they are pleasant to the wrongly disposed, to think they are generally pleasant, or to any but these; just as things that are wholesome or sweet or bitter to the sick, are not so to all, and as things are not really white that seem so to those suffering from opthalmia.

But tangible differ from visible and sonorous impressions, in that the latter are perceived by the medium acting in some way upon us, while the former are perceived, not by, but together with, the medium, like a man who is struck through his shield--for it is not the shield which, having been struck, strikes him, but the shield and he are simultaneously struck together.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

Now ends clearly differ from one another. For, firstly, in some cases the end is an act, while in others it is a material result beyond and besides that act. And, where the action involves any such end beyond itself, this end is of necessity better than is the act by which it is produced.

Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime.

Wealth is clearly not the absolute good of which we are in search, for it is a utility, and only desirable as a means.

Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type--not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly.

Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality--namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song.

Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.

One may perhaps be led to suppose that it is virtue that is the end of the statesman's life. Yet even virtue itself would seem to fall short of being an absolute end.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature's way.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.