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)
