Background Image

...

And Of Course, The Brain Is Not Responsible For Any Of The Sensations At All. The Correct View Is That The Seat And Source Of Sensation Is The Region Of The Heart.

-Aristotle

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

And Of Course, The

Aristotle

...

And Of Course, The Brain Is Not Responsible For Any Of The Sensations At All. The Correct View Is That The Seat And Source Of Sensation Is The Region Of The Heart.

Views: 80688

Topic

More From Aristotle

The Line Between Lawful And Unlawful Abortion Will Be Marked By The Fact Of Having Sensation And Being Alive.

We Are Not Angry With People We Fear Or Respect, As Long As We Fear Or Respect Them; You Cannot Be Afraid Of A Person And Also At The Same Time Angry With Him.

One Would Have Thought That It Was Even More Necessary To Limit Population Than Property; And That The Limit Should Be Fixed By Calculating The Chances Of Mortality In The Children, And Of Sterility In Married Persons. The Neglect Of This Subject, Which In Existing States Is So Common, Is A Never-failing Cause Of Poverty Among The Citizens; And Poverty Is The Parent Of Revolution And Crime.

The Best Political Community Is Formed By Citizens Of The Middle Class.

For Often, When One Is Asleep, There Is Something In Consciousness Which Declares That What Then Presents Itself Is But A Dream.

A Likely Impossibility Is Always Preferable To An Unconvincing Possibility.

The Soul Is Characterized By These Capacities; Self-nutrition, Sensation, Thinking, And Movement.

There Are No Experienced Young People. Time Makes Experience.

Distance Does Not Break Off The Friendship Absolutely, But Only The Activity Of It.

Long Distance Relationship

The So-called Pythagoreans, Who Were The First To Take Up Mathematics, Not Only Advanced This Subject, But Saturated With It, They Fancied That The Principles Of Mathematics Were The Principles Of All Things.

Since The Things We Do Determine The Character Of Life, No Blessed Person Can Become Unhappy. For He Will Never Do Those Things Which Are Hateful And Petty.

Pay Attention To The Young, And Make Them Just As Good As Possible.

Imagination Is A Sort Of Faint Perception.

A Young Man Is Not A Proper Hearer Of Lectures On Political Science; For He Is Inexperienced In The Actions That Occur In Life, But Its Discussions Start From These And Are About These; And, Further, Since He Tends To Follow His Passions, His Study Will Be Vain And Unprofitable, Because The End That Is Aimed At Is Not Knowledge But Action. And It Makes No Difference Whether He Is Young In Years Or Youthful In Character.

Justice Is That Virtue Of The Soul Which Is Distributive According To Desert.

That Body Is Heavier Than Another Which, In An Equal Bulk, Moves Downward Quicker.

If Something's Bound To Happen, It Will Happen.. Right Time, Right Person, And For The Best Reason.

For The Real Difference Between Humans And Other Animals Is That Humans Alone Have Perception Of Good And Evil, Just And Unjust, Etc. It Is The Sharing Of A Common View In These Matters That Makes A Household And A State.

A Common Danger Unites Even The Bitterest Enemies.

One May Go Wrong In Many Different Ways, But Right Only In One, Which Is Why It Is Easy To Fail And Difficult To Succeed.

All Persons Ought To Endeavor To Follow What Is Right, And Not What Is Established.

It Concerns Us To Know The Purposes We Seek In Life, For Then, Like Archers Aiming At A Definite Mark, We Shall Be More Likely To Attain What We Want.

The Majority Of Mankind Would Seem To Be Beguiled Into Error By Pleasure, Which, Not Being Really A Good, Yet Seems To Be So. So That They Indiscriminately Choose As Good Whatsoever Gives Them Pleasure, While They Avoid All Pain Alike As Evil.

We Praise A Man Who Feels Angry On The Right Grounds And Against The Right Persons And Also In The Right Manner At The Right Moment And For The Right Length Of Time.

I Call That Law Universal, Which Is Conformable Merely To Dictates Of Nature; For There Does Exist Naturally An Universal Sense Of Right And Wrong, Which, In A Certain Degree, All Intuitively Divine, Even Should No Intercourse With Each Other, Nor Any Compact Have Existed.

Nature Of Man Is Not What He Was Born As, But What He Is Born For.

Where Some People Are Very Wealthy And Others Have Nothing, The Result Will Be Either Extreme Democracy Or Absolute Oligarchy, Or Despotism Will Come From Either Of Those Excesses.

The True End Of Tragedy Is To Purify The Passions.

So The Good Has Been Well Explained As That At Which All Things Aim.

He Overcomes A Stout Enemy Who Overcomes His Own Anger.

It Is Homer Who Has Chiefly Taught Other Poets The Art Of Telling Lies Skillfully.

Art Not Only Imitates Nature, But Also Completes Its Deficiencies.

Friends Are An Aid To The Young, To Guard Them From Error; To The Elderly, To Attend To Their Wants And To Supplement Their Failing Power Of Action; To Those In The Prime Of Life, To Assist Them To Noble Deeds.

My Best Friend Is The Man Who In Wishing Me Well Wishes It For My Sake.

Every Effort Therefore Must Be Made To Perpetuate Prosperity. And, Since That Is To The Advantage Of The Rich As Well As The Poor, All That Accrues From The Revenues Should Be Collected Into A Single Fund And Distributed In Block Grants To Those In Need, If Possible In Lump Sums Large Enough For The Acquisition Of A Small Piece Of Land, But If Not, Enough To Start A Business, Or Work In Agriculture. And If That Cannot Be Done For All, The Distribution Might Be By Tribes Or Some Other Division Each In Turn.

It Is Better For A City To Be Governed By A Good Man Than By Good Laws.

Cruel Is The Strife Of Brothers.

Even When Laws Have Been Written Down, They Ought Not Always To Remain Unaltered.

Nature, As We Say, Does Nothing Without Some Purpose; And For Thepurpose Of Making Mana Political Animal She Has Endowed Him Alone Among The Animals With The Power Of Reasoned Speech.

A Goal Gets Us Motivated,while A Good Habit Keeps Us Stay Motivated.

When The Storytelling Goes Bad In A Society, The Result Is Decadence.

It Is Evident That The State Is A Creation Of Nature, And That Man Is By Nature A Political Animal.

Whereas Happiness Is The Highest Good, Being A Realization And Perfect Practice Of Virtue, Which Some Can Attain, While Others Have Little Or None Of It, The Various Qualities Of Men Are Clearly The Reason Why There Are Various Kinds Of States And Many Forms Of Government; For 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.

In The Case Of Some People, Not Even If We Had The Most Accurate Scientific Knowledge, Would It Be Easy To Persuade Them Were We To Address Them Through The Medium Of That Knowledge; For A Scientific Discourse, It Is The Privilege Of Education To Appreciate, And It Is Impossible That This Should Extend To The Multitude.

If Everything When It Occupies An Equal Space Is At Rest, And If That Which Is In Locomotion Is Always Occupying Such A Space At Any Moment, The Flying Arrow Is Therefore Motionless.

To Be Angry Is Easy. But To Be Angry With The Right Man At The Right Time And In The Right Manner, That Is Not Easy.

A Line Is Not Made Up Of Points. ... In The Same Way, Time Is Not Made Up Parts Considered As Indivisible 'nows.' Part Of Aristotle's Reply To Zeno's Paradox Concerning Continuity.

There Is An Error Common To Both Oligarchies And To Democracies: In The Latter The Demagogues, When The Multitude Are Above The Law, Are Always Cutting The City In Two By Quarrels With The Rich, Whereas They Should Always Profess To Be Maintaining Their Cause; Just As In Oligarchies The Oligarchs Should Profess To Maintain The Cause Of The People, . .

The Greatest Of All Pleasures Is The Pleasure Of Learning.

One Who Faces And Who Fears The Right Things And From The Right Motive, In The Right Way And At The Right Time, Posseses Character Worthy Of Our Trust And Admiration.

In Everything, It Is No Easy Task To Find The Middle.

The High-minded Man Does Not Bear Grudges, For It Is Not The Mark Of A Great Soul To Remember Injuries, But To Forget Them.

The Most Beautiful Colors Laid On At Random, Give Less Pleasure Than A Black-and-white Drawing.

Black And White

Neither By Nature, Then, Nor Contrary To Nature Do The Virtues Arise In Us; Rather We Are Adapted By Nature To Receive Them, And Are Made Perfect By Habit.

For Good Is Simple, Evil Manifold.

People Do Not Naturally Become Morally Excellent Or Practically Wise. They Become So, If At All, Only As The Result Of Lifelong Personal And Community Effort.

For This Reason Poetry Is Something More Philosophical And More Worthy Of Serious Attention Than History.

It Is Of Itself That The Divine Thought Thinks (since It Is The Most Excellent Of Things), And Its Thinking Is A Thinking On Thinking.

Bad Men Are Full Of Repentance.

The Democrats Think That As They Are Equal They Ought To Be Equal In All Things.

A True Disciple Shows His Appreciation By Reaching Further Than His Teacher.

In Bad Or Corrupted Natures The Body Will Often Appear To Rule Over The Soul, Because They Are In An Evil And Unnatural Condition. At All Events We May Firstly Observe In Living Creatures Both A Despotical And A Constitutional Rule; For The Soul Rules The Body With A Despotical Rule, Whereas The Intellect Rules The Appetites With A Constitutional And Royal Rule. And It Is Clear That The Rule Of The Soul Over The Body, And Of The Mind And The Rational Element Over The Passionate, Is Natural And Expedient; Whereas The Equality Of The Two Or The Rule Of The Inferior Is Always Hurtful.

So It Is Naturally With The Male And The Female; The One Is Superior, The Other Inferior; The One Governs, The Other Is Governed; And The Same Rule Must Necessarily Hold Good With Respect To All Mankind.

Between Friends There Is No Need Of Justice.

Love Is The Cause Of Unity In All Things.

With The Truth, All Given Facts Harmonize; But With What Is False, The Truth Soon Hits A Wrong Note.

Some Men Are Just As Sure Of The Truth Of Their Opinions As Are Others Of What They Know.

We Have Next To Consider The Formal Definition Of Virtue.

A Period May Be Defined As A Portion Of Speech That Has In Itself A Beginning And An End, Being At The Same Time Not Too Big To Be Taken In At A Glance

There Are Still Two Forms Besides Democracy And Oligarchy; One Of Them Is Universally Recognized And Included Among The Four Principal Forms Of Government, Which Are Said To Be (1) Monarchy, (2) Oligarchy, (3) Democracy, And (4) The So-called Aristocracy Or Government Of The Best. But There Is Also A Fifth, Which Retains The Generic Name Of Polity Or Constitutional Government.

The Best Way To Teach Morality Is To Make It A Habit With Children.

Friends Are Much Better Tried In Bad Fortune Than In Good.

Men Become Builders By Building And Lyreplayers By Playing The Lyre; So Too We Become Just By Doing Just Acts, Temperate By Doing Temperate Acts, Brave By Doing Brave Acts.

The Life Of Theoretical Philosophy Is The Best And Happiest A Man Can Lead. Few Men Are Capable Of It And Then Only Intermittently. For The Rest There Is A Second-best Way Of Life, That Of Moral Virtue And Practical Wisdom.

Words Of Wisdom

The Arousing Of Prejudice, Pity, Anger, And Similar Emotions Has Nothing To Do With The Essential Facts, But Is Merely A Personal Appeal To The Man Who Is Judging The Case.

There Is Nothing Strange In The Circle Being The Origin Of Any And Every Marvel.

Leisure Of Itself Gives Pleasure And Happiness And Enjoyment Of Life, Which Are Experienced, Not By The Busy Man, But By Those Who Have Leisure.

Opinion Involves Belief (for Without Belief In What We Opine We Cannot Have An Opinion), And In The Brutes Though We Often Find Imagination We Never Find Belief.

Anyone Who Has No Need Of Anybody But Himself Is Either A Beast Or A God.

The Probable Is What Usually Happens.

For It Is Owing To Their Wonder That Men Both Now Begin And At First Began To Philosophize... They Were Pursuing Science In Order To Know, And Not For Any Utilitarian End.

When You Feel Yourself Lacking Something, Send Your Thoughts Towards Your Intimate And Search For The Divinity That Lives Within You.

Lacking Something

For Suppose That Every Tool We Had Could Perform Its Task, Either At Our Bidding Or Itself Perceiving The Need, And If-like The Statues Made By Dædalus Or The Tripods Of Hephæstus, Of Which The Poet Says That "self-moved They Enter The Assembly Of The Gods" - Shuttles In A Loom Could Fly To And Fro And A Plectrum Play A Lyre All Self-moved, Then Master-craftsmen Would Have No Need Of Servants Nor Masters Of Slaves.

Nor Need It Cause Surprise That Things Disagreeable To The Good Man Should Seem Pleasant To Some Men; For Mankind Is Liable To Many Corruptions And Diseases, And The Things In Question Are Not Really Pleasant, But Only Pleasant To These Particular Persons, Who Are In A Condition To Think Them So.

Victory Is Plesant, Not Only To Those Who Love To Conquer, Bot To All; For There Is Produced An Idea Of Superiority, Which All With More Or Less Eagerness Desire.

We Ought Not To Listen To Those Who Exhort Us, Because We Are Human, To Think Of Human Things....we Ought Rather To Take On Immortality As Much As Possible, And Do All That We Can To Live In Accordance With The Highest Element Within Us; For Even If Its Bulk Is Small, In Its Power And Value It Far Exceeds Everything.

Those Who Believe That All Virtue Is To Be Found In Their Own Party Principles Push Matters To Extremes; They Do Not Consider That Disproportion Destroys A State.

He Who Hath Many Friends Hath None.

So, If We Must Give A General Formula Applicable To All Kinds Of Soul, We Must Describe It As The First Actuality [entelechy] Of Anatural Organized Body.

Evils Draw Men Together.

The First Principle Of All Action Is Leisure.

We Are Better Able To Study Our Neighbours Than Ourselves, And Their Actions Than Our Own.

Consider Pleasures As They Depart, Not As They Come.

Those Who Assert That The Mathematical Sciences Say Nothing Of The Beautiful Or The Good Are In Error. For These Sciences Say And Prove A Great Deal About Them; If They Do Not Expressly Mention Them, But Prove Attributes Which Are Their Results Or Definitions, It Is Not True That They Tell Us Nothing About Them. The Chief Forms Of Beauty Are Order And Symmetry And Definiteness, Which The Mathematical Sciences Demonstrate In A Special Degree.

In The Perfect State The Good Man Is Absolutely The Same As The Good Citizen; Whereas In Other States The Good Citizen Is Only Good Relatively To His Own Form Of Government.

Character Is Made By Many Acts; It May Be Lost By A Single One.

Knowing Yourself Is The Beginning Of All Wisdom.

Every Art And Every Inquiry, And Similarly Every Action And Pursuit, Is Thought To Aim At Some Good; And For This Reason The Good Has Rightly Been Declared To Be That At Which All Things Aim.

When There Is No Middle Class, And The Poor Greatly Exceed In Number, Troubles Arise, And The State Soon Comes To An End.

Either A Beast Or A God.

No One Will Dare Maintain That It Is Better To Do Injustice Than To Bear It.

Of Ill-temper There Are Three Kinds: Irascibility, Bitterness, Sullenness. It Belongs To The Ill-tempered Man To Be Unable To Bear Either Small Slights Or Defeats But To Be Given To Retaliation And Revenge, And Easily Moved To Anger By Any Chance Deed Or Word. Ill-temper Is Accompanied By Excitability Of Character, Instability, Bitter Speech, And Liability To Take Offence At Trifles And To Feel These Feelings Quickly And On Slight Occasions.

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.

Poverty Is The Parent Of Revolution And Crime.

Republics Decline Into Democracies And Democracies Degenerate Into Despotisms.

Our Account Does Not Rob The Mathematicians Of Their Science... In Point Of Fact They Do Not Need The Infinite And Do Not Use It.

Thus Then A Single Harmony Orders The Composition Of The Whole...by The Mingling Of The Most Contrary Principles.

The Student Of Politics Therefore As Well As The Psychologist Must Study The Nature Of The Soul.

And Inasmuch As The Great-souled Man Deserves Most, He Must Be The Best Of Men; For The Better A Man Is The More He Deserves, And He That Is Best Deserves Most. Therefore The Truly Great-souled Man Must Be A Good Man. Indeed Greatness In Each Of The Virtues Would Seem To Go With Greatness Of Soul.

Men Cling To Life Even At The Cost Of Enduring Great Misfortune.

Virtue Is More Clearly Shown In The Performance Of Fine Actions Than In The Non-performance Of Base Ones.

At First He Who Invented Any Art That Went Beyond The Common Perceptions Of Man Was Naturally Admired By Men, Not Only Because There Was Something Useful In The Inventions, But Because He Was Thought Wise And Superior To The Rest. But As More Arts Were Invented, And Some Were Directed To The Necessities Of Life, Others To Its Recreation, The Inventors Of The Latter Were Always Regarded As Wiser Than The Inventors Of The Former, Because Their Branches Of Knowledge Did Not Aim At Utility.

Earthworms Are The Intenstines Of The Soil.

It Is The Mark Of An Educated Mind To Be Able To Entertain A Thought Without Accepting It.

Happiness Is Self-connectedness.

Tyrants Preserve Themselves By Sowing Fear And Mistrust Among The Citizens By Means Of Spies, By Distracting Them With Foreign Wars, By Eliminating Men Of Spirit Who Might Lead A Revolution, By Humbling The People, And Making Them Incapable Of Decisive Action.

The Most Important Relationship We Can All Have Is The One You Have With Yourself, The Most Important Journey You Can Take Is One Of Self-discovery. To Know Yourself, You Must Spend Time With Yourself, You Must Not Be Afraid To Be Alone. Knowing Yourself Is The Beginning Of All Wisdom.

Important Relationships

The Soul Never Thinks Without A Picture.

There Are Three Things That Are The Motives Of Choice And Three That Are The Motives Of Avoidance; Namely, The Noble, The Expedient, And The Pleasant, And Their Opposites, The Base, The Harmful, And The Painful. Now In Respect Of All These The Good Man Is Likely To Go Right And The Bad To Go Wrong, But Especially In Respect Of Pleasure; For Pleasure Is Common To Man With The Lower Animals, And Also It Is A Concomitant Of All The Objects Of Choice, Since Both The Noble And The Expedient Appear To Us Pleasant.

Nothing In Life Is More Necessary Than Friendship.

But Nothing Is Yet Clear On The Subject Of The Intellect And The Contemplative Faculty. However, It Seems To Be Another Kind Of Soul, And This Alone Admits Of Being Separated, As That Which Is Eternal From That Which Is Perishable, While It Is Clear From These Remarks That The Other Parts Of The Soul Are Not Separable, As Some Assert Them To Be, Though It Is Obvious That They Are Conceptually Distinct.

The Laws Are, And Ought To Be, Relative To The Constitution, And Not The Constitution To The Laws. A Constitution Is The Organization Of Offices In A State, And Determines What Is To Be The Governing Body, And What Is The End Of Each Community. But Laws Are Not To Be Confounded With The Principles Of The Constitution; They Are The Rules According To Which The Magistrates Should Administer The State, And Proceed Against Offenders.

It Is Not Always The Same Thing To Be A Good Man And A Good Citizen.

Demonstration Is Also Something Necessary, Because A Demonstration Cannot Go Otherwise Than It Does, ... And The Cause Of This Lies With The Primary Premises/principles.

Words Of Wisdom

That Which Is Common To The Greatest Number Has The Least Care Bestowed Upon It

The Energy Or Active Exercise Of The Mind Constitutes Life.

People Never Know Each Other Until They Have Eaten A Certain Amount Of Salt Together.

The Misanthrope, As An Essentially Solitary Man, Is Not A Man At All: He Must Be A Beast Or A God.

For That Which Has Become Habitual, Becomes As It Were Natural.

That Which Is In Locomotion Must Arrive At The Half-way Stage Before It Arrives At The Goal.

Our Problem Is Not That We Aim Too High And Miss, But That We Aim Too Low And Hit.

In All Things Which Have A Plurality Of Parts, And Which Are Not A Total Aggregate But A Whole Of Some Sort Distinct From The Parts, There Is Some Cause.

The Good Of Man Is The Active Exercise Of His Soul's Faculties. This Exercise Must Occupy A Complete Lifetime. One Swallow Does Make A Spring, Nor Does One Fine Day. Excellence Is A Habit, Not An Event.

A Bad Man Can Do A Million Times More Harm Than A Beast.

It Makes No Difference Whether A Good Man Has Defrauded A Bad Man, Or A Bad Man Defrauded A Good Man, Or Whether A Good Or Bad Man Has Committed Adultery: The Law Can Look Only To The Amount Of Damage Done.

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.

In Poverty And Other Misfortunes Of Life, True Friends Are A Sure Refuge. The Young They Keep Out Of Mischief; To The Old They Are A Comfort And Aid In Their Weakness, And Those In The Prime Of Life They Incite To Noble Deeds.

The Honors And Rewards Fall To Those Who Show Their Good Qualities In Action.

It Is In Justice That The Ordering Of Society Is Centered.

Those Who Merely Possess The Goods Of Fortune May Be Haughty And Insolent; . . . They Try To Imitate The Great-souled Man Without Being Really Like Him, And Only Copy Him In What They Can, Reproducing His Contempt For Others But Not His Virtuous Conduct. For The Great-souled Man Is Justified In Despising Other People - His Estimates Are Correct; But Most Proud Men Have No Good Ground For Their Pride.

Boundaries Don't Protect Rivers, People Do.

Now The Greatest External Good We Should Assume To Be The Thing Which We Offer As A Tribute To The Gods, And Which Is Most Coveted By Men Of High Station, And Is The Prize Awarded For The Noblest Deeds; And Such A Thing Is Honor, For Honor Is Clearly The Greatest Of External Goods.

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.

Persuasion Is Effected Through The Medium Of The Hearers, When They Shall Have Been Brought To A State Of Excitement Under The Influence Of Speech; For We Do Not, When Influenced By Pain Or Joy, Or Partiality Or Dislike, Award Our Decisions In The Same Way; About Which Means Of Persuasion Alone, I Declare That The System-mongers Of The Present Day Busy Themselves.

Truth Is A Remarkable Thing. We Cannot Miss Knowing Some Of It. But We Cannot Know It Entirely.

When...we, As Individuals, Obey Laws That Direct Us To Behave For The Welfare Of The Community As A Whole, We Are Indirectly Helping To Promote The Pursuit Of Happiness By Our Fellow Human Beings.

Pursuit Of Happiness

Education And Morals Make The Good Man, The Good Statesman, The Good Ruler.

The Mass Of Mankind Are Evidently Slavish In Their Tastes, Preferring A Life Suitable To Beasts.

The End Of Labor Is To Gain Leisure.

Happiness, Then, Is Co-extensive With Contemplation, And The More People Contemplate, The Happier They Are; Not Incidentally, But In Virtue Of Their Contemplation, Because It Is In Itself Precious. Thus Happiness Is A Form Of Contemplation.

95% Of Everything You Do Is The Result Of Habit.

Meanness Is Incurable; It Cannot Be Cured By Old Age, Or By Anything Else.

The Society That Loses Its Grip On The Past Is In Danger, For It Produces Men Who Know Nothing But The Present, And Who Are Not Aware That Life Had Been, And Could Be, Different From What It Is.

The Citizens Begin By Giving Up Some Part Of The Constitution, And So With Greater Ease The Government Change Something Else Which Is A Little More Important, Until They Have Undermined The Whole Fabric Of The State.

Happiness Belongs To The Self Sufficient.

Those Who Act Receive The Prizes.

Of The Tyrant, Spies And Informers Are The Principal Instruments. War Is His Favorite Occupation, For The Sake Of Engrossing The Attention Of The People, And Making Himself Necessary To Them As Their Leader.

He Who Confers A Benefit On Anyone Loves Him Better Than He Is Beloved.

Wit Is Educated Insolence.

When Pleasure Is At The Bar The Jury Is Not Impartial.

Those Who Educate Children Well Are More To Be Honored Than They Who Produce Them; For These Only Gave Them Life, Those The Art Of Living Well.

In Part, Art Completes What Nature Cannot Elaborate; And In Part It Imitates Nature.

Wretched, Ephemeral Race, Children Of Chance And Tribulation, Why Do You Force Me To Tell You The Very Thing Which It Would Be Most Profitable For You Not To Hear? The Very Best Thing Is Utterly Beyond Your Reach: Not To Have Been Born, Not To Be, To Be Nothing. However, The Second Best Thing For You Is: To Die Soon.

Memory Is Therefore, Neither Perception Nor Conception, But A State Or Affection Of One Of These, Conditioned By Lapse Of Time. As Already Observed, There Is No Such Thing As Memory Of The Present While Present, For The Present Is Object Only Of Perception, And The Future, Of Expectation, But The Object Of Memory Is The Past. All Memory, Therefore, Implies A Time Elapsed; Consequently Only Those Animals Which Perceive Time Remember, And The Organ Whereby They Perceive Time Is Also That Whereby They Remember.

Therefore The Good Man Ought To Be A Lover Of Self, Since He Will Then Both Benefit Himself By Acting Nobly And Aid His Fellows; But The Bad Man Ought Not To Be A Lover Of Self, Since He Will Follow His Base Passions, And So Injure Both Himself And His Neighbors. With The Bad Man Therefore, What He Does Is Not In Accord With What He Ought To Do, But The Good Man Does What He Ought, Since Intelligence Always Chooses For Itself That Which Is Best, And The Good Man Obeys His Intelligence.

Law Is Order, And Good Law Is Good Order.

God Has Many Names, Though He Is Only One Being.

It Is Clear That Those Constitutions Which Aim At The Common Good Are Right, As Being In Accord With Absolute Justice; While Those Which Aim Only At The Good Of The Rulers Are Wrong.

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.

A Promise Made Must Be A Promise Kept.

The Most Perfect Political Community Is One In Which The Middle Class Is In Control, And Outnumbers Both Of The Other Classes.

It Is Our Choice Of Good Or Evil That Determines Our Character, Not Our Opinion About Good Or Evil.

The Ultimate Value Of Life Depends Upon Awareness And The Power Of Contemplation Rather Than Upon Mere Survival.

A Fool Contributes Nothing Worth Hearing And Takes Offense At Everything.

For We Do Not Think That We Know A Thing Until We Are Acquainted With Its Primary Conditions Or First Principles, And Have Carried Our Analysis As Far As Its Simplest Elements.

While Most Of Those Who Hold That The Whole Heaven Is Finite Say That The Earth Lies At The Center, The Philosophers Of Italy, The So-called Pythagoreans, Assert The Contrary. They Say That In The Middle There Is Fire, And That The Earth Is One Of The Stars, And By Its Circular Motion Round The Center Produces Night And Day.

The Life Of The Intellect Is The Best And Pleasantest For Man, Because The Intellect More Than Anything Else Is The Man. Thus It Will Be The Happiest Life As Well.

What Is The Essence Of Life? To Serve Others And To Do Good.

We Must No More Ask Whether The Soul And Body Are One Than Ask Whether The Wax And The Figure Impressed On It Are One.

How Strange It Is That Socrates, After Having Made The Children Common, Should Hinder Lovers From Carnal Intercourse Only, But Should Permit Love And Familiarities Between Father And Son Or Between Brother And Brother, Than Which Nothing Can Be More Unseemly, Since Even Without Them Love Of This Sort Is Improper. How Strange, Too, To Forbid Intercourse For No Other Reason Than The Violence Of The Pleasure, As Though The Relationship Of Father And Son Or Of Brothers With One Another Made No Difference.

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.

At His Best, Man Is The Noblest Of All Animals; Separated From Law And Justice He Is The Worst.

There Is Nothing Unequal As The Equal Treatment Of Unequals.

Equal Treatment

The Eyes Are The Organs Of Temptation, And The Ears Are The Organs Of Instruction.

Yellow-colored Objects Appear To Be Gold

Democracy Is When The Indigent, And Not The Men Of Property, Are The Rulers.

Happiness Does Not Lie In Amusement; It Would Be Strange If One Were To Take Trouble And Suffer Hardship All One's Life In Order To Amuse Oneself.

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.

The Chief Forms Of Beauty Are Order And Symmetry And Definiteness, Which The Mathematical Sciences Demonstrate In A Special Degree.

The Hand Is The Tool Of Tools.

All Three States - The Lacedaemonian, The Cretan, And The Carthaginian - Nearly Resemble One Another, And Are Very Different From Any Others. Many Of The Carthaginian Institutions Are Excellent. The Superiority Of Their Constitution Is Proved By The Fact That The Common People Remains Loyal To The Constitution; The Carthaginians Have Never Had Any Rebellion Worth Speaking Of, And Have Never Been Under The Rule Of A Tyrant.

...we Are All Inclined To ... Direct Our Inquiry Not By The Matter Itself, But By The Views Of Our Opponents; And, Even When Interrogating Oneself, One Pushes The Inquiry Only To The Point At Which One Can No Longer Offer Any Opposition. Hence A Good Inquirer Will Be One Who Is Ready In Bringing Forward The Objections Proper To The Genus, And That He Will Be When He Has Gained An Understanding Of The Differences.

Poetry Demands A Man With A Special Gift For It, Or Else One With A Touch Of Madness In Him.

All Art Is Concerned With Coming Into Being.

The Tyrant, Who In Order To Hold His Power, Suppresses Every Superiority, Does Away With Good Men, Forbids Education And Light, Controls Every Movement Of The Citizens And, Keeping Them Under A Perpetual Servitude, Wants Them To Grow Accustomed To Baseness And Cowardice, Has His Spies Everywhere To Listen To What Is Said In The Meetings, And Spreads Dissension And Calumny Among The Citizens And Impoverishes Them, Is Obliged To Make War In Order To Keep His Subjects Occupied And Impose On Them Permanent Need Of A Chief.

In Painting, The Most Brilliant Colors, Spread At Random And Without Design, Will Give Far Less Pleasure Than The Simplest Outline Of A Figure.

Self-sufficiency Is Both A Good And An Absolute Good.

Nature Does Nothing In Vain. Therefore, It Is Imperative For Persons To Act In Accordance With Their Nature And Develop Their Latent Talents, In Order To Be Content And Complete.

No One Would Choose A Friendless Existence On Condition Of Having All The Other Things In The World.

Knowledge Of The Fact Differs From Knowledge Of The Reason For The Fact.

Trending Author

George MacDonald

Candace Bushnell

Frederick Soddy

Category