It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics.
A substance--that which is called a substance most strictly, primarily, and most of all--is that which is neither said of a subject on or in a subject, e.g. the individual man or the individual horse.
Aristotle. Categories.
We call relatives all such things as are said to be just what they are, of or than other things, or in some other way in relation to something else. For example, what is larger is called what it is than something else (it is called larger than something); and what is double is called what it is of something else (it is called double of something); similarly with all other such cases.
Aristotle. Categories.
States are also conditions but conditions are not necessarily states. For people in a state are, in virtue of this, also in some condition, but people in a condition are not in every case also in a state.
Aristotle. Categories.
Perhaps when one wishes to prove something, one ought not to employ illustrations that are not manifest, but to illustrate the obscure by the manifest, and the things of mind by the things of sense; for the latter are more manifest.
Aristotle. Magna Moralia.
For if you make a man too fearless, so as not even to fear the gods, he is not brave but mad, but if you make him afraid of everything, he is a coward. To be brave, then, a man must not either fear everything or nothing.
Aristotle. Magna Moralia.
Now that principle of an act, whether good or bad, is choice and wish, and all that accords with reason. It is evident, then, that these also change. But we chage in our actions volulntarily. So that the principle also, choice, changes voluntarily. So that it is plain that it will be in our power to be either good or bad.
Aristotle. Magna Moralia.
What prompts us to action is desire; and desire has three forms--appetite, passion, wish.
Aristotle. Magna Moralia.
Temperance is a mean between intemperance and insensibility to pleasures. For temperance and generally every excellence is the best state, and the best state lies in the attainment of the best thing, and the best thing is the mean between excess and defect; for people are blameworthy on both grounds, both on that of excess and on that of defect. So that, since the mean is best, temperance will be a mean state between intemperance and insensibility. These, then, are the vices between which it will be a mean.
Aristotle.Magna Moralia.
Are wisdom and philosophy the same thing? Surely not! For philosophy has to do with things that can be demonstrated and are eternally the same, but wisdom has not to do with these, but with things that undergo change.
Aristotle.Magna Moralia.
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action ... with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.
Aristotle.Poetics.(1449b24). 350 BCE.
A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.
Aristotle.Poetics.(1450b26). 350 BCE.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle.Poetics.(1451b6). 350 BCE.
Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.
Aristotle.Poetics.(1455a33). 350 BCE.
But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.
Aristotle.Poetics.(1459a4). 350 BCE.
Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
Aristotle.Poetics.(1460a19). 350 BCE.
For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle.Poetics.(1461b11). 350 BCE.
If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1094a18). c. 325 BC.
It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1094b24). c. 325 BC.
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1096a5). c. 325 BC.
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics. (I.1096a16). c. 325 BC.
For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1097b25). c. 325 BC.
If ... we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence ... human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1098a13). c. 325 BC.
One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1098a18). c. 325 BC.
For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity. Now ... it is not probable that these should be entirely mistaken, but rather that they should be right in at least some one respect or even in most respects.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1098b23). c. 325 BC.
For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.... Now for most men their pleasures are in conflict with one another because these are not by nature pleasant, but the lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; and virtuous actions are such... 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.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1099a6). c. 325 BC.
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1099b22). c. 325 BC.
The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1101a). c. 325 BC.
May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly, because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing the good things we have specified to be supremely blessed, though on the human scale of bliss.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(I.1101a10). c. 325 BC.
For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(II.1103a33). c. 325 BC.
It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(II.1105b9). c. 325 BC.
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Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited ... and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(II.1106b28). c. 325 BC.
The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics. (II.1107a4). c. 325 BC.
In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.,
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(II.1107a15). c. 325 BC.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(VIII.1155a5). c. 325 BC.
When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(VIII.1155a26). c. 325 BC.
After these matters we ought perhaps next to discuss pleasure. For it is thought to be most intimately connected with our human nature, which is the reason why in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain; it is thought, too, that to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character. For these things extend right through life, with a weight and power of their own in respect both to virtue and to the happy life, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful; and such things, it will be thought, we should least of all omit to discuss, especially since they admit of much dispute.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics. (X.1172a17). c. 325 BC.
And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(X.1177b4). c. 325 BC.
Now the activity of the practical virtues is exhibited in political or military affairs, but the actions concerned with these seem to be unleisurely. Warlike actions are completely so (for no one chooses to be at war, or provokes war, for the sake of being at war; any one would seem absolutely murderous if he were to make enemies of his friends in order to bring about battle and slaughter); but the action of the statesman is also unleisurely, and-apart from the political action itself-aims at despotic power and honours, or at all events happiness, for him and his fellow citizens-a happiness different from political action, and evidently sought as being different. So if among virtuous actions political and military actions are distinguished by nobility and greatness, and these are unleisurely and aim at an end and are not desirable for their own sake, but the activity of reason, which is contemplative, seems both to be superior in serious worth and to aim at no end beyond itself, and to have its pleasure proper to itself (and this augments the activity), and the self-sufficiency, leisureliness, unweariedness (so far as this is possible for man), and all the other attributes ascribed to the supremely happy man are evidently those connected with this activity, it follows that this will be the complete happiness of man, if it be allowed a complete term of life.
Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethics.(X.1177b6). c. 325 BC.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
