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It Must Not Be Supposed That Happiness Will Demand Many Or Great Possessions; For Self-sufficiency Does Not Depend On Excessive Abundance, Nor Does Moral Conduct, And It Is Possible To Perform Noble Deeds Even Without Being Ruler Of Land And Sea: One Can Do Virtuous Acts With Quite Moderate Resources. This May Be Clearly Observed In Experience: Private Citizens Do Not Seem To Be Less But More Given To Doing Virtuous Actions Than Princes And Potentates. It Is Sufficient Then If Moderate Resources Are Forthcoming; For A Life Of Virtuous Activity Will Be Essentially A Happy Life.

-Aristotle

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It Must Not Be

Aristotle

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It Must Not Be Supposed That Happiness Will Demand Many Or Great Possessions; For Self-sufficiency Does Not Depend On Excessive Abundance, Nor Does Moral Conduct, And It Is Possible To Perform Noble Deeds Even Without Being Ruler Of Land And Sea: One Can Do Virtuous Acts With Quite Moderate Resources. This May Be Clearly Observed In Experience: Private Citizens Do Not Seem To Be Less But More Given To Doing Virtuous Actions Than Princes And Potentates. It Is Sufficient Then If Moderate Resources Are Forthcoming; For A Life Of Virtuous Activity Will Be Essentially A Happy Life.

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The Intelligence Consists Not Only In The Knowledge But Also In The Skill To Apply The Knowledge Into Practice.

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.

Art Completes What Nature Cannot Bring To Finish. The Artist Gives Us Knowledge Of Nature's Unrealized Ends.

No Excellent Soul Is Exempt From A Mixture Of Madness.

Fear Is Pain Arising From The Anticipation Of Evil.

We Are The Sum Of Our Actions, And Therefore Our Habits Make All The Difference.

The Family Is The Association Established By Nature For The Supply Of Men's Everyday Wants.

Poetry Is Finer And More Philosophical Than History; For Poetry Expresses The Universal, And History Only The Particular.

Anything Whose Presence Or Absence Makes No Discernible Difference Is No Essential Part Of The Whole.

It Was Through The Feeling Of Wonder That Men Now And At First Began To Philosophize.

Adoration Is Made Out Of A Solitary Soul Occupying Two Bodies.

The One Exclusive Sign Of Thorough Knowledge Is The Power Of Teaching.

It Is Their Character Indeed That Makes People Who They Are. But It Is By Reason Of Their Actions That They Are Happy Or The Reverse.

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.

When Quarrels And Complaints Arise, It Is When People Who Are Equal Have Not Got Equal Shares, Or Vice-versa.

When Several Villages Are United In A Single Complete Community, Large Enough To Be Nearly Or Quite Self-sufficing, The State Comes Into Existence, Originating In The Bare Needs Of Life, And Continuing In Existence For The Sake Of A Good Life.

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

Freedom Is Obedience To Self-formulated Rules.

Nicomachean Ethics

What Has Soul In It Differs From What Has Not, In That The Former Displays Life. Now This Word Has More Than One Sense, And Provided Any One Alone Of These Is Found In A Thing We Say That Thing Is Living. Living, That Is, May Mean Thinking Or Perception Or Local Movement And Rest, Or Movement In The Sense Of Nutrition, Decay And Growth. Hence We Think Of Plants Also As Living, For They Are Observed To Possess In Themselves An Originative Power Through Which They Increase Or Decrease In All Spatial Directions.

For Imagining Lies Within Our Power Whenever We Wish . . . But In Forming Opinons We Are Not Free . . .

All Art Is Concerned With Coming Into Being; For It Is Concerned Neither With Things That Are, Or Come Into Being By Necessity, Nor With Things That Do So In Accordance With Nature.

There Are Some Jobs In Which It Is Impossible For A Man To Be Virtuous.

The Intention Makes The Crime.

Great Men Are Always Of A Nature Originally Melancholy.

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.

It Is Not Sufficient To Know What One Ought To Say, But One Must Also Know How To Say It.

I Will Not Allow The Athenians To Sin Twice Against Philosophy.

The Error Of Socrates Must Be Attributed To The False Notion Of Unity From Which He Starts. Unity There Should Be, Both Of The Family And Of The State, But In Some Respects Only. For There Is A Point At Which A State May Attain Such A Degree Of Unity As To Be No Longer A State, Or At Which, Without Actually Ceasing To Exist, It Will Become An Inferior State, Like Harmony Passing Into Unison, Or Rhythm Which Has Been Reduced To A Single Foot. The State, As I Was Saying, Is A Plurality Which Should Be United And Made Into A Community By Education

Happiness Is A Quality Of The Soul...not A Function Of One's Material Circumstances.

The Hardest Victory Is The Victory Over Self.

The Purpose Of The Present Study Is Not As It Is In Other Inquiries, The Attainment Of Knowledge, We Are Not Conducting This Inquiry In Order To Know What Virtue Is, But In Order To Become Good, Else There Would Be No Advantage In Studying It. For That Reason, It Becomes Necessary To Examine The Problem Of Our Actions And To Ask How They Are To Be Performed. For As We Have Said, The Actions Determine What Kind Of Characteristics Are Developed.

A Vivid Image Compels The Whole Body To Follow.

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.

Both Oligarch And Tyrant Mistrust The People, And Therefore Deprive Them Of Their Arms.

Even The Best Of Men In Authority Are Liable To Be Corrupted By Passion. We May Conclude Then That The Law Is Reason Without Passion, And It Is Therefore Preferable To Any Individual.

In A Democracy The Poor Will Have More Power Than The Rich, Because There Are More Of Them, And The Will Of The Majority Is Supreme.

Democracies Have

Our Virtues Are Voluntary (and In Fact We Are In A Sense Ourselves Partly The Cause Of Our Moral Dispositions, And It Is Our Having A Certain Character That Makes Us Set Up An End Of A Certain Kind), It Follows That Our Vices Are Voluntary Also; They Are Voluntary In The Same Manner As Our Virtues.

[the Virtues] Cannot Exist Without Prudence. A Proof Of This Is That Everyone, Even At The Present Day, In Defining Virtue, After Saying What Disposition It Is [i.e. Moral Virtue] And Specifying The Things With Which It Is Concerned, Adds That It Is A Disposition Determined By The Right Principle; And The Right Principle Is The Principle Determined By Prudence.

What Soon Grows Old? Gratitude.

The Greatest Thing By Far Is To Be A Master Of Metaphor; It Is The One Thing That Cannot Be Learned From Others; And It Is Also A Sign Of Genius, Since A Good Metaphor Implies An Intuitive Perception Of The Similarity Of The Dissimilar.

Today You Can Start Forming Habits For Overcoming All Obstacles In Life... Even Nicotine Cravings

Hence Both Women And Children Must Be Educated With An Eye To The Constitution, If Indeed It Makes Any Difference To The Virtue Of A City-state That Its Children Be Virtuous, And Its Women Too. And It Must Make A Difference, Since Half The Free Population Are Women, And From Children Come Those Who Participate In The Constitution.

Bad People...are In Conflict With Themselves; They Desire One Thing And Will Another, Like The Incontinent Who Choose Harmful Pleasures Instead Of What They Themselves Believe To Be Good.

Philosophy Is The Science Which Considers Truth.

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.

For What Is The Best Choice For Each Individual Is The Highest It Is Possible For Him To Achieve.

A Man Who Examines Each Subject From A Philosophical Standpoint Cannot Neglect Them: He Has To Omit Nothing, And State The Truth About Each Topic.

A Promise Made Must Be A Promise Kept.

Good Habits Formed At Youth Make All The Difference.

The Mathematical Sciences Particularly Exhibit Order Symmetry And Limitations; And These Are The Greatest Forms Of The Beautiful.

The State Comes Into Existence For The Sake Of Life And Continues To Exist For The Sake Of Good Life.

Character Is Revealed Through Action.

All Food Must Be Capable Of Being Digested, And That What Produces Digestion Is Warmth; That Is Why Everything That Has Soul In It Possesses Warmth.

Equity Is That Idea Of Justice Which Contravenes The Written Law.

You Should Never Think Without An Image.

Most Persons Think That A State In Order To Be Happy Ought To Be Large; But Even If They Are Right, They Have No Idea Of What Is A Large And What A Small State.... To The Size Of States There Is A Limit, As There Is To Other Things, Plants, Animals, Implements; For None Of These Retain Their Natural Power When They Are Too Large Or Too Small, But They Either Wholly Lose Their Nature, Or Are Spoiled.

Finally, If Nothing Can Be Truly Asserted, Even The Following Claim Would Be False, The Claim That There Is No True Assertion.

We Are What We Continually Do.

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.

While The Faculty Of Sensation Is Dependent Upon The Body, Mind Is Separable From It

Concerning The Generation Of Animals Akin To Them, As Hornets And Wasps, The Facts In All Cases Are Similar To A Certain Extent, But Are Devoid Of The Extraordinary Features Which Characterize Bees; This We Should Expect, For They Have Nothing Divine About Them As The Bees Have.

It Is Evident, Then, That There Is A Sort Of Education In Which Parents Should Train Their Sons, Not As Being Useful Or Necessary, But Because It Is Liberal Or Noble.

When You Are Lonely, When You Feel Yourself An Alien In The World, Play Chess. This Will Raise Your Spirits And Be Your Counselor In War

Some Vices Miss What Is Right Because They Are Deficient, Others Because They Are Excessive, In Feelings Or In Actions, While Virtue Finds And Chooses The Mean.

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.

There Are Three Qualifications Required In Those Who Have To Fill The Highest Offices, - (1) First Of All, Loyalty To The Established Constitution; (2) The Greatest Administrative Capacity; (3) Virtue And Justice Of The Kind Proper To Each Form Of Government.

The Trade Of The Petty Usurer Is Hated With Most Reason: It Makes A Profit From Currency Itself, Instead Of Making It From The Process Which Currency Was Meant To Serve. Their Common Characteristic Is Obviously Their Sordid Avarice.

It Belongs To Small-mindedness To Be Unable To Bear Either Honor Or Dishonor, Either Good Fortune Or Bad, But To Be Filled With Conceit When Honored And Puffed Up By Trifling Good Fortune, And To Be Unable To Bear Even The Smallest Dishonor And To Deem Any Chance Failure A Great Misfortune, And To Be Distressed And Annonyed At Everything. Moreover The Small-minded Man Is The Sort Of Person To Call All Slights An Insult And Dishonor, Even Those That Are Due To Ignorance Or Forgetfulness. Small-mindedness Is Accompanied By Pettiness, Querulousness, Pessimism And Self-abasement.

Some Persons Hold That, While It Is Proper For The Lawgiver To Encourage And Exhort Men To Virtue On Moral Grounds, In The Expectation That Those Who Have Had A Virtuous Moral Upbringing Will Respond, Yet He Is Bound To Impose Chastisement And Penalties On The Disobedient And Ill-conditioned, And To Banish The Incorrigible Out Of The State Altogether. For (they Argue) Although The Virtuous Man, Who Guides His Life By Moral Ideals, Will Be Obedient To Reason, The Base, Whose Desires Are Fixed On Pleasure, Must Be Chastised By Pain, Like A Beast Of Burden.

Such An Event Is Probable In Agathon's Sense Of The Word: 'it Is Probable,' He Says, 'that Many Things Should Happen Contrary To Probability.'

He Who Can Be, And Therefore Is, Another's, And He Who Participates In Reason Enough To Apprehend, But Not To Have, Is A Slave By Nature.

Of Cases Where A Man Is Truthful Both In Speech And Conduct When No Considerations Of Honesty Come In, From An Habitual Sincerity Of Disposition. Such Sincerity May Be Esteemed A Moral Excellence; For The Lover Of Truth, Who Is Truthful Even When Nothing Depends On It, Will A Fortiori Be Truthful When Some Interest Is At Stake, Since Having All Along Avoided Falsehood For Its Own Sake, He Will Assuredly Avoid It When It Is Morally Base; And This Is A Disposition That We Praise.

The Character Which Results From Wealth Is That Of A Prosperous Fool.

There Is No Genius Who Hasn't A Touch Of Insanity.

[hope Is] The Dream Of A Waking Man.

Funny Inspirational

It Is Best To Rise From Life As From A Banquet, Neither Thirsty Nor Drunken.

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.

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.

Men Agree That Justice In The Abstract Is Proportion, But They Differ In That Some Think That If They Are Equal In Any Respect They Are Equal Absolutely, Others That If They Are Unequal In Any Respect They Should Be Unequal In All. The Only Stable Principle Of Government Is Equality According To Proportion, And For Every Man To Enjoy His Own.

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

But It Is Not At All Certain That This Superiority Of The Many Over The Sound Few Is Possible In The Case Of Every People And Every Large Number. There Are Some Whom It Would Be Impossible: Otherwise The Theory Would Apply To Wild Animals- And Yet Some Men Are Hardly Any Better Than Wild Animals.

What We Know Is Not Capable Of Being Otherwise; Of Things Capable Of Being Otherwise We Do Not Know, When They Have Passed Outsideour Observation, Whether They Exist Or Not. Therefore The Object Of Knowledge Is Of Necessity. Therefore It Is Eternal; For Things That Are Of Necessity In The Unqualified Sense Are All Eternal; And Things That Are Eternal Are Ungenerated And Imperishable.

A Good Man May Make The Best Even Of Poverty And Disease, And The Other Ills Of Life; But He Can Only Attain Happiness Under The Opposite Conditions

That In The Soul Which Is Called The Mind Is, Before It Thinks, Not Actually Any Real Thing.

A Good Character Carries With It The Highest Power Of Causing A Thing To Be Believed.

Yet The True Friend Of The People Should See That They Be Not Too Poor, For Extreme Povery Lowers The Character Of The Democracy; Measures Therefore Should Be Taken Which Will Give Them Lasting Prosperity; And As This Is Equally The Interest Of All Classes, The Proceeds Of The Public Revenues Should Be Accumulated And Distributed Among Its Poor, If Possible, In Such Quantities As May Enable Them To Purchase A Little Farm, Or, At Any Rate, Make A Beginning In Trade Or Husbandry.

Man Is By Nature A Social Animal; An Individual Who Is Unsocial Naturally And Not Accidentally Is Either Beneath Our Notice Or More Than Human. Society Is Something That Precedes The Individual. Anyone Who Either Cannot Lead The Common Life Or Is So Self-sufficient As Not To Need To, And Therefore Does Not Partake Of Society, Is Either A Beast Or A God.

The Wise Man Knows Of All Things, As Far As Possible, Although He Has No Knowledge Of Each Of Them In Detail

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

Any Change Of Government Which Has To Be Introduced Should Be One Which Men, Starting From Their Existing Constitutions, Will Be Both Willing And Able To Adopt, Since There Is Quite As Much Trouble In The Reformation Of An Old Constitution As In The Establishment Of A New One, Just As To Unlearn Is As Hard As To Learn.

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.

Purpose Is A Desire For Something In Our Own Power, Coupled With An Investigation Into Its Means.

Patience Is So Like Fortitude That She Seems Either Her Sister Or Her Daughter.

The Basis Of A Democratic State Is Liberty

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.

[prudence] Is The Virtue Of That Part Of The Intellect [the Calculative] To Which It Belongs; And . . . Our Choice Of Actions Will Not Be Right Without Prudence Any More Than Without Moral Virtue, Since, While Moral Virtue Enables Us To Achieve The End, Prudence Makes Us Adopt The Right Means To The End.

For Good Is Simple, Evil Manifold.

Bad Men Are Full Of Repentance.

To Let Them Share In The Highest Offices Is To Take A Risk; Inevitably, Their Unjust Standards Will Cause Them To Commit Injustice, And Their Lack Of Judgement Will Lead Them Into Error. On The Other Hand There Is A Risk In Not Giving Them A Share, And In Their Non Participation, For When There Are Many Who Have No Property And No Honours They Inevitably Constitute A Huge Hostile Element In The State. But It Can Still Remain Open To Them To Participate In Deliberating And Judging.

Every Great Genius Has An Admixture Of Madness.

All Men Naturally Desire Knowledge. An Indication Of This Is Our Esteem For The Senses; For Apart From Their Use We Esteem Them For Their Own Sake, And Most Of All The Sense Of Sight. Not Only With A View To Action, But Even When No Action Is Contemplated, We Prefer Sight, Generally Speaking, To All The Other Senses. The Reason Of This Is That Of All The Senses Sight Best Helps Us To Know Things, And Reveals Many Distinctions.

For 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.

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.

Xenophanes States That The Fire In Lipara Once Failed For Sixteen Years, But Returned In The Seventeenth Year. They Say That The Lava-stream In Etna Is Neither Flaming Nor Continuous, But Returns Only After An Interval Of Many Years.

Money Is A Guarantee That We Can Have What We Want In The Future

Guarantees That

Only An Armed People Can Be Truly Free. Only An Unarmed People Can Ever Be Enslaved.

The Excellence Of A Thing Is Related To Its Proper Function.

Whatever We Learn To Do, We Learn By Actually Doing It; Men Come To Be Builders, For Instance, By Building, And Harp Players By Playing The Harp. In The Same Way, By Doing Just Acts We Come To Be Just; By Doing Self-controlled Acts, We Come To Be Self-controlled ; And By Doing Brave Acts, We Become Brave.

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.

Temperance Is A Mean With Regard To Pleasures.

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.

Happiness Belongs To The Self Sufficient.

People Become House Builders Through Building Houses, Harp Players Through Playing The Harp. We Grow To Be Just By Doing Things Which Are Just.

Building Houses

Anybody Can Become Angry - That Is Easy, But To Be Angry With The Right Person And To The Right Degree And At The Right Time And For The Right Purpose, And In The Right Way - That Is Not Within Everybody's Power And Is Not Easy.

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

Suffering Becomes Beautiful When Anyone Bears Great Calamities With Cheerfulness, Not Through Insensibility But Through Greatness Of Mind.

It Is Through Wonder That Men Now Begin And Originally Began To Philosophize; Wondering In The First Place At Obvious Perplexities, And Then By Gradual Progression Raising Questions About The Greater Matters Too.

Whatsoever That Be Within Us That Feels, Thinks, Desires, And Animates, Is Something Celestial, Divine, And, Consequently, Imperishable.

It Is The Mark Of An Educated Mind To Expect That Amount Of Exactness Which The Nature Of The Particular Subject Admits. It Is Equally Unreasonable To Accept Merely Probable Conclusions From A Mathematician And To Demand Strict Demonstration From An Orator.

[meanness] Is More Ingrained In Man's Nature Than Prodigality; The Mass Of Mankind Are Avaricious Rather Than Open-handed.

That Judges Of Important Causes Should Hold Office For Life Is A Questionable Thing, For The Mind Grows Old As Well As The Body.

The Greatest Victory Is Over Self.

Greatest Victory

Even If We Could Suppose The Citizen Body To Be Virtuous, Without Each Of Them Being So, Yet The Latter Would Be Better, For In The Virtue Of Each The Virtue Of All Is Involved.

Equality Is Of Two Kinds, Numerical And Proportional; By The First I Mean Sameness Of Equality In Number Or Size; By The Second, Equality Of Ratios.

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.

Every Man Should Be Responsible To Others, Nor Should Anyone Be Allowed To Do Just As He Pleases; For Where Absolute Freedom Is Allowed There Is Nothing To Restrain The Evil Which Is Inherent In Every Man. But The Principle Of Responsibility Secures That Which Is The Greatest Good In States; The Right Persons Rule And Are Prevented From Doing Wrong, And The People Have Their Due. It Is Evident That This Is The Best Kind Of Democracy, And Why? Because The People Are Drawn From A Certain Class.

Friendship Also Seems To Be The Bond That Hold Communities Together.

The Soul Is The Cause Or Source Of The Living Body. The Terms Cause And Source Have Many Senses. But The Soul Is The Cause Of Its Body Alike In All Three Senses Which We Explicitly Recognize. It Is (a) The Source Or Origin Of Movement, It Is (b) The End, It Is (c) The Essence Of The Whole Living Body.

Moral Virtue Is A Mean . . . Between Two Vices, One Of Excess And The Other Of Defect; . . . It Is Such A Mean Because It Aims At Hitting The Middle Point In Feelings And In Actions. This Is Why It Is A Hard Task To Be Good, For It Is Hard To Find The Middle Point In Anything.

Men Are Divided Between Those Who Are As Thrifty As If They Would Live Forever, And Those Who Are As Extravagant As If They Were Going To Die The Next Day.

Man Is By Nature A Political Animal.

Happiness Does Not Consist In Pastimes And Amusements But In Virtuous Activities.

We Must Not Listen To Those Who Advise Us 'being Men To Think Human Thoughts, And Being Mortal To Think Mortal Thoughts' But Must Put On Immortality As Much As Possible And Strain Every Nerve To Live According To That Best Part Of Us, Which, Being Small In Bulk, Yet Much More In Its Power And Honour Surpasses All Else.

It Is Possible To Fail In Many Ways . . . 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 The Lesser Evil Is Reckoned A Good In Comparison With The Greater Evil, Since The Lesser Evil Is Rather To Be Chosen Than The Greater. .

To Thales The Primary Question Was Not What Do We Know, But How Do We Know It.

The Law Does Not Expressly Permit Suicide, And What It Does Not Permit It Forbids.

The Proof That You Know Something Is That You Are Able To Teach It

...happiness Is An Activity And A Complete Utilization Of Virtue, Not Conditionally But Absolutely.

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 Man Who Confers A Favour Would Rather Not Be Repaid In The Same Coin.

It Would Be Wrong To Put Friendship Before The Truth.

It Is Easier To Get One Or A Few Of Good Sense, And Of Ability To Legislate And Adjudge, Than To Get Many.

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

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.

Female Cats Are Very Lascivious, And Make Advances To The Male.

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.

Democracy Is The Form Of Government In Which The Free Are Rulers, And Oligarchy In Which The Rich; It Is Only An Accident That The Free Are The Many And The Rich Are The Few.

It Is The Activity Of The Intellect That Constitutes Complete Human Happiness - Provided It Be Granted A Complete Span Of Life, For Nothing That Belongs To Happiness Can Be Incomplete.

Governments Which Have A Regard To The Common Interest Are Constituted In Accordance With Strict Principles Of Justice, And Are Therefore True Forms; But Those Which Regard Only The Interest Of The Rulers Are All Defective And Perverted Forms, For They Are Despotic, Whereas A State Is A Community Of Freemen.

If A Man Of Good Natural Disposition Acquires Intelligence [as A Whole], Then He Excels In Conduct, And The Disposition Which Previously Only Resembled Virtue, Will Now Be Virtue In The True Sense. Hence Just As With The Faculty Of Forming Opinions [the Calculative Faculty] There Are Two Qualities, Cleverness And Prudence, So Also In The Moral Part Of The Soul There Are Two Qualities, Natural Virtue And True Virtue; And True Virtue Cannot Exist Without Prudence.

Every Community Is An Association Of Some Kind And Every Community Is Established With A View To Some Good; For Everyone Always Acts In Order To Obtain That Which They Think Good. But, If All Communities Aim At Some Good, The State Or Political Community, Which Is The Highest Of All, And Which Embraces All The Rest, Aims At Good In A Greater Degree Than Any Other, And At The Highest Good.

The Pleasures Arising From Thinking And Learning Will Make Us Think And Learn All The More. 1153a 23

Nicomachean Ethics

The Perversions Are As Follows: Of Royalty, Tyranny; Of Aristocracy, Oligarchy; Of Constitutional Government, Democracy.

It Is Absurd To Hold That A Man Ought To Be Ashamed Of Being Unable To Defend Himself With His Limbs, But Not Of Being Unable To Defend Himself With Speech And Reason, When The Use Of Rational Speech Is More Distinctive Of A Human Being Than The Use Of His Limbs.

The Good Lawgiver Should Inquire How States And Races Of Men And Communities May Participate In A Good Life, And In The Happiness Which Is Attainable By Them.

Man By Nature Wants To Know.

Quality Is Not An Act, It Is A Habit.

Anything That We Have To Learn To Do We Learn By The Actual Doing Of It; People Become Builders By Building And Instrumentalists By Playing Instruments. Similarily, We Become Just By Performing Just Acts, Temperate By Performing Temperate Ones, Brave By Performing Brave Ones.

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.

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

The Wise Man Does Not Expose Himself Needlessly To Danger, Since There Are Few Things For Which He Cares Sufficiently; But He Is Willing, In Great Crises, To Give Even His Life - Knowing That Under Certain Conditions It Is Not Worthwhile To Live.

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

There Are, Then, These Three Means Of Effecting Persuasion. The Man Who Is To Be In Command Of Them Must, It Is Clear, Be Able (1) To Reason Logically, (2) To Understand Human Character And Goodness In Their Various Forms, And (3) To Understand The Emotions--that Is, To Name Them And Describe Them, To Know Their Causes And The Way In Which They Are Excited.

All Art Is Concerned With Coming Into Being.

To Be Ignorant Of Motion Is To Be Ignorant Of Nature

The Goodness Or Badness, Justice Or Injustice, Of Laws Varies Of Necessity With The Constitution Of States. This, However, Is Clear, That The Laws Must Be Adapted To The Constitutions. But If So, True Forms Of Government Will Of Necessity Have Just Laws, And Perverted Forms Of Government Will Have Unjust Laws.

It Is Evidently Equally Foolish To Accept Probable Reasoning From A Mathematician And To Demand From A Rhetorician Demonstrative Proofs.

In The Laws It Is Maintained That The Best Constitution Is Made Up Of Democracy And Tyranny, Which Are Either Not Constitutions At All, Or Are The Worst Of All. But They Are Nearer The Truth Who Combine Many Forms; For The Constitution Is Better Which Is Made Up Of More Numerous Elements. The Constitution Proposed In The Laws Has No Element Of Monarchy At All; It Is Nothing But Oligarchy And Democracy, Leaning Rather To Oligarchy.

Youth Is Easily Deceived Because It Is Quick To Hope.

Happiness, Then, Is Found To Be Something Perfect And Self-sufficient, Being The End To Which Our Actions Are Directed.

But If Nothing But Soul, Or In Soul Mind, Is Qualified To Count, It Is Impossible For There To Be Time Unless There Is Soul, But Only That Of Which Time Is An Attribute, I.e. If Change Can Exist Without Soul.

Nature Herself, As Has Been Often Said, Requires That We Should Be Able, Not Only To Work Well, But To Use Leisure Well; For, As I Must Repeat Once Again, The First Principle Of All Action Is Leisure. Both Are Required, But Leisure Is Better Than Occupation And Is Its End.

[i]t Is Rather The Case That We Desire Something Because We Believe It To Be Good Than That We Believe A Thing To Be Good Because We Desire It. It Is The Thought That Starts Things Off.

A Flatterer Is A Friend Who Is Your Inferior, Or Pretends To Be So.

Again, The Male Is By Nature Superior, And The Female Inferior; And The One Rules, And The Other Is Ruled; This Principle, Of Necessity, Extends To All Mankind.

The Good Citizen Need Not Of Necessity Possess The Virtue Which Makes A Good Man.

Emotions Of Any Kind Are Produced By Melody And Rhythm; Therefore By Music A Man Becomes Accustomed To Feeling The Right Emotions; Music Has Thus The Power To Form Character, And The Various Kinds Of Music Based On Various Modes May Be Distinguished By Their Effects On Character.

If Then It Be Possible That One Contrary Should Exist, Or Be Called Into Existence, The Other Contrary Will Also Appear To Be Possible.

The Soul Is The Form Of The Body

For Even They Who Compose Treatises Of Medicine Or Natural Philosophy In Verse Are Denominated Poets: Yet Homer And Empedocles Have Nothing In Common Except Their Metre; The Former, Therefore, Justly Merits The Name Of The Poet; While The Other Should Rather Be Called A Physiologist Than A Poet.

Men Are Good In But One Way, But Bad In Many.

Nicomachean Ethics

Evils Draw Men Together.

All Flatterers Are Mercenary, And All Low-minded Men Are Flatterers.

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.

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

The Goal Of War Is Peace, Of Business, Leisure

The Heart Is The Perfection Of The Whole Organism. Therefore The Principles Of The Power Of Perception And The Souls Ability To Nourish Itself Must Lie In The Heart.

For Pleasure Is A State Of Soul, And To Each Man That Which He Is Said To Be A Lover Of Is Pleasant.

Why Is It That All Those Who Have Become Eminent In Philosophy, Politics, Poetry, Or The Arts Are Clearly Of An Atrabilious Temperament And Some Of Them To Such An Extent As To Be Affected By Diseases Caused By Black Bile?

Adventure Is Worthwhile.

Try Is A Noisy Way Of Doing Nothing.

No Democracy Can Exist Unless Each Of Its Citizens Is As Capable Of Outrage At Injustice To Another As He Is Of Outrage At Unjustice To Himself.

Nowadays, For The Sake Of The Advantage Which Is To Be Gained From The Public Revenues And From Office, Men Want To Be Always In Office.

Character Is Determined By Choice, Not Opinion.

I Count Him Braver Who Overcomes His Desires Than Him Who Conquers His Enemies; For The Hardest Victory Is Over Self.

Suppose, Then, That All Men Were Sick Or Deranged, Save One Or Two Of Them Who Were Healthy And Of Right Mind. It Would Then Be The Latter Two Who Would Be Thought To Be Sick And Deranged And The Former Not!

God And Nature Create Nothing That Does Not Fulfill A Purpose

Between Husband And Wife Friendship Seems To Exist By Nature, For Man Is Naturally Disposed To Pairing.

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