Aristotle

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Aristotle

Biography : Greek philosopher.
Born: -384 - Died: -322
Period:
4th century BC
Place of birth: Greece
Greece

Greece

Aristotle - Quotes

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Aristotle

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
Aristotle

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
Aristotle

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
Aristotle

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
Aristotle

death

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.
Aristotle

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.
Aristotle

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

beauty

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
Aristotle

wisdom

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
Aristotle

youth

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
Aristotle

courage

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

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
Aristotle

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.
Aristotle

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

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

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
Aristotle

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
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

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Aristotle

courage

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Aristotle

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
Aristotle

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
Aristotle

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.
Aristotle

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.
Aristotle

soul

Wit is educated insolence.
Aristotle

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals separated from law and justice he is the worst.
Aristotle

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

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
Aristotle