More Aristotle Quotes And Musings

by allinspiration.com

“There are three prominent types of life: pleasure, political and contemplative. The mass of mankind is slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts; they have some ground for this view since they are imitating many of those in high places. People of superior refinement identify happiness with honour, or virtue, and generally the political life.”
– Aristotle

“The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion since wealth is not the good we are seeking and is merely useful for the sake of something else.”
– Aristotle

“Our duty as philosophers requires us to honour truth above our friends.”
– Aristotle

“If things are good in themselves, the good will appear as something identical in them all, but the accounts of the goodness in honour, wisdom, and pleasure are diverse. The good therefore is not some common element answering to one Idea.”
– Aristotle

“Even if there be one good which is universally predictable or is capable of independent existence, it could not be attained by man.”
– Aristotle

“If there is an end for all we do, it will be the good achievable by action.”
– Aristotle

“The self-sufficient we define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and complete, and such we think happiness to be. It cannot be exceeded and is therefore the end of action.”
– Aristotle

“If we consider the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate principle; if this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
– Aristotle

“We must first roughly sketch the good and later fill in the details; anyone is capable of articulating what has once been well outlined. The beginning is thought to be more than half of the whole.”
– Aristotle

“Some identify Happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophical wisdom, others add or exclude pleasure and yet others include prosperity. We agree with those who identify happiness with virtue, for virtue belongs with virtuous behaviour and virtue is only known by its acts.”
– Aristotle

“Lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; since virtue is by nature pleasant, they by virtuous actions find their pleasures within themselves.”
– Aristotle

“The man who does not rejoice in noble actions is not good; the good man judges well in matters of the good and the noble.”
– Aristotle

“Most noble is that which is most just, best is health; Most pleasant is to win what we love. Delphic Inscription.”
– Aristotle

“Is happiness to be acquired by learning, by habit, or some other form of training? It seems to come as a result of virtue and some process of learning and to be among the godlike things since its end is godlike and blessed.”
– Aristotle

“All who are able, may gain virtue by study and care, for it is better to be happy by the action of nature than by chance. To entrust to chance what is most important would be defective reasoning.”
– Aristotle

“Political science spends most of its pains on forming its citizens to be of good character and capable of noble acts.”
– Aristotle

“Durable virtue will belong to the happy man, and he will be happy throughout his life, for he will always opt for virtuous acts and thoughts and he will bear the hazards of life with nobility and live beyond reproach.”
– Aristotle

“No happy man can become miserable, for he will never do acts that are hateful and mean.”
– Aristotle

“Should we not say that he is happy whose acts are virtuous and has adequate external goods for his lifetime?”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“No one praises happiness as he does justice, but rather calls it blessed, as being something more divine and better. Praise is appropriate to virtue, because as a result of virtue men tend to do noble deeds.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“Since happiness is an activity of soul in harmony with virtue, we must consider virtue to see if she can help us to understand happiness. The student of politics studies virtue above all else since he wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“In speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding, but that he is good tempered; we praise the wise man for his state of mind.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“Virtue, is of two kinds, intellectual and moral; intellectual owes its birth and growth to teaching while moral virtue comes to us through habit. None of the moral virtues arises in us by nature for nothing in nature can change its nature; we are adapted by nature to receive them and by habit, perfect them.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“By acting as we do with other men we make ourselves just or unjust. It makes no small difference whether we form habits of one kind or another from early youth; it makes, rather, all the difference.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“By abstaining from pleasures we become temperate and once temperate we are more able to abstain from them. Likewise, once habituated to despise what is terrible we become courageous.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“Moral excellence is concerned with pleasure and pain; because of pleasure we do bad things and for fear of pain we avoid noble ones. For this reason we ought to be trained from youth, as Plato says: to find pleasure and pain where we ought; this is the purpose of education.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“There are three objects of choice and three of avoidance: the noble, the advantageous, the pleasant and their contraries, the base, the injurious, the painful, and about all of these the good man tends to go right and the bad man tends to go wrong.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“It is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus’ phrase, but both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder; even the good is better when it is harder. The concern of both virtue and political science is with pleasures and pains; the man who uses these well will be good, he who uses them badly, bad.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“Men who do just and temperate acts are just and temperate.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

“Knowledge is not necessary for the possession of the virtues, whereas the habits which result from doing just and temperate acts count for all. By doing just acts the just man is produced, by doing temperate acts, the temperate man; without acting well no one can become good. Most people avoid good acts and take refuge in theory and think that by becoming philosophers they will become good.”
– Atrributed to Aristotle

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