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They Who Have Drunk Beer, Fall On Their Back, But There Is A Peculiarity In The Effects Of The Drink Made From Barley, For They That Get Drunk On Other Intoxicating Liquors Fall On All Parts Of Their Body, They Fall On The Left Side, On The Right Side, On Their Faces, And And On Their Backs. But It Is Only Those Who Get Drunk On Beer That Fall On Their Backs With Their Faces Upward.

-Aristotle

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They Who Have Drunk

Aristotle

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They Who Have Drunk Beer, Fall On Their Back, But There Is A Peculiarity In The Effects Of The Drink Made From Barley, For They That Get Drunk On Other Intoxicating Liquors Fall On All Parts Of Their Body, They Fall On The Left Side, On The Right Side, On Their Faces, And And On Their Backs. But It Is Only Those Who Get Drunk On Beer That Fall On Their Backs With Their Faces Upward.

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Peace Is More Difficult Than War.

Memory Is The Scribe Of The Soul.

He Who Takes His Fill Of Every Pleasure ... Becomes Depraved; While He Who Avoids All Pleasures Alike ... Becomes Insensible.

Happiness Itself Is Sufficient Excuse. Beautiful Things Are Right And True; So Beautiful Actions Are Those Pleasing To The Gods. Wise Men Have An Inward Sense Of What Is Beautiful, And The Highest Wisdom Is To Trust This Intuition And Be Guided By It. The Answer To The Last Appeal Of What Is Right Lies Within A Man's Own Breast. Trust Thyself.

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.

The Greatest Thing In Style Is To Have A Command Of Metaphor.

But Obviously A State Which Becomes Progressively More And More Of A Unity Will Cease To Be A State At All. Plurality Of Numbers Is Natural In A State; And The Farther It Moves Away From Plurality Towards Unity, The Less Of A State It Becomes And The More A Household, And The Household In Turn An Individual.

The Young Are Permanently In A State Resembling Intoxication.

The Unfortunate Need People Who Will Be Kind To Them; The Prosperous Need People To Be Kind To.

Where Your Talents And The Needs Of The World Cross, Therein Lies Your Vocation. These Two, Your Talents And The Needs Of The World, Are The Great Wake Up Calls To Your True Vocation In Life... To Ignore This, Is In Some Sense, Is To Lose Your Soul.

All That We Do Is Done With An Eye To Something Else.

Bravery Is A Mean State Concerned With Things That Inspire Confidence And With Things Fearful ... And Leading Us To Choose Danger And To Face It, Either Because To Do So Is Noble, Or Because Not To Do So Is Base. But To Court Death As An Escape From Poverty, Or From Love, Or From Some Grievous Pain, Is No Proof Of Bravery, But Rather Of Cowardice.

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

In All Well-attempered Governments There Is Nothing Which Should Be More Jealously Maintained Than The Spirit Of Obedience To Law, More Especially In Small Matters; For Transgression Creeps In Unperceived And At Last Ruins The State, Just As The Constant Recurrence Of Small Expenses In Time Eats Up A Fortune.

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

Perhaps Here We Have A Clue To The Reason Why Royal Rule Used To Exist Formerly, Namely The Difficulty Of Finding Enough Men Of Outstanding Virtue.

Try Is A Noisy Way Of Doing Nothing.

The Happy Life Is Regarded As A Life In Conformity With Virtue. It Is A Life Which Involves Effort And Is Not Spent In Amusement.

As Our Acts Vary, Our Habits Will Follow In Their Course.

In Inventing A Model We May Assume What We Wish, But Should Avoid Impossibilities.

A Courageous Person Is One Who Faces Fearful Things As He Ought And As Reason Directs For The Sake Of What Is Noble.

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.

The Energy Of The Mind Is The Essence Of Life.

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

Some Men Turn Every Quality Or Art Into A Means Of Making Money; This They Conceive To Be The End, And To The Promotion Of The End All Things Must Contribute.

Melancholy Men, Of All Others, Are The Most Witty.

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

He Who Cannot Be A Good Follower Cannot Be A Good Leader.

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

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

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

A Life Of Wealth And Many Belongings Is Only A Means To Happiness. Honor, Power, And Success Cannot Be Happiness Because They Depend On The Whims Of Others, And Happiness Should Be Self-contained, Complete In Itself.

Music Imitates (represents) The Passions Or States Of The Soul, Such As Gentleness, Anger, Courage, Temperance, And Their Opposites.

Although It May Be Difficult In Theory To Know What Is Just And Equal, The Practical Difficulty Of Inducing Those To Forbear Who Can, If They Like, Encroach, Is Far Greater, For The Weaker Are Always Asking For Equality And Justice, But The Stronger Care For None Of These Things.

Patience S Bitter, But It's Fruit Is Sweet.

In General, What Is Written Must Be Easy To Read And Easy To Speak; Which Is The Same.

The Educated Differ From The Uneducated As Much As The Living From The Dead.

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

No Man Of High And Generous Spirit Is Ever Willing To Indulge In Flattery; The Good May Feel Affection For Others, But Will Not Flatter Them.

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There Must Be In Prudence Also Some Master Virtue.

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.

Happiness Is At Once The Best, The Noblest, And The Pleasantest Of Things.

Nicomachean Ethics

The True Nature Of Anything Is What It Becomes At Its Highest.

The Beginning, As The Proverb Says, Is Half The Whole.

If You Would Understand Anything, Observe Its Beginning And Its Development

The Precepts Of The Law May Be Comprehended Under These Three Points: To Live Honestly, To Hurt No Man Willfully, And To Render Every Man His Due Carefully.

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.

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.

Rhetoric Is Useful Because Truth And Justice Are In Their Nature Stronger Than Their Opposites; So That If Decisions Be Made, Not In Conformity To The Rule Of Propriety, It Must Have Been That They Have Been Got The Better Of Through Fault Of The Advocates Themselves: And This Is Deserving Reprehension.

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Friends Enhance Our Ability To Think And Act.

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When The Looms Spin By Themselves, We'll Have No Need For Slaves.

Intuition Is The Source Of Scientific Knowledge.

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.

For Nature By The Same Cause, Provided It Remain In The Same Condition, Always Produces The Same Effect, So That Either Coming-to-be Or Passing-away Will Always Result.

But Is It Just Then That The Few And The Wealthy Should Be The Rulers? And What If They, In Like Manner, Rob And Plunder The People, - Is This Just?

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.

Perception Starts With The Eye.

The Young Are Heated By Nature As Drunken Men By Wine.

Not To Know Of What Things One Should Demand Demonstration, And Of What One Should Not, Argues Want Of Education.

Republics Decline Into Democracies And Democracies Degenerate Into Despotisms.

These, Then, Are The Four Kinds Of Royalty. First The Monarchy Of The Heroic Ages; This Was Exercised Over Voluntary Subjects, But Limited To Certain Functions; The King Was A General And A Judge, And Had The Control Of Religion The Second Is That Of The Barbarians, Which Is A Hereditary Despotic Government In Accordance With Law. A Third Is The Power Of The So-called Aesynmete Or Dictator; This Is An Elective Tyranny. The Fourth Is The Lacedaemonian, Which Is In Fact A Generalship, Hereditary And Perpetual.

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

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

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

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.

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 Greatest Injustices Proceed From Those Who Pursue Excess, Not By Those Who Are Driven By Necessity.

The Good Man Is He For Whom, Because He Is Virtuous, The Things That Are Absolutely Good Are Good; It Is Also Plain That His Use Of These Goods Must Be Virtuous And In The Absolute Sense Good.

The Science That Studies The Supreme Good For Man Is Politics.

Have A Definite, Clear, Practical Ideal - A Goal, An Objective.

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...in This Way The Structure Of The Universe- I Mean, Of The Heavens And The Earth And The Whole World- Was Arranged By One Harmony Through The Blending Of The Most Opposite Principles.

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.

Through Discipline Comes Freedom.

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.

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

He Is His Own Best Friend And Takes Delight In Privacy Whereas The Man Of No Virtue Or Ability Is His Own Worst Enemy And Is Afraid Of Solitude.

Rhetoric Is Useful Because The True And The Just Are Naturally Superior To Their Opposites, So That, If Decisions Are Improperly Made, They Must Owe Their Defeat To Their Own Advocates; Which Is Reprehensible. Further, In Dealing With Certain Persons, Even If We Possessed The Most Accurate Scientific Knowledge, We Should Not Find It Easy To Persuade Them By The Employment Of Such Knowledge. For Scientific Discourse Is Concerned With Instruction, But In The Case Of Such Persons Instruction Is Impossible.

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.

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

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.

Nature Makes Nothing Incomplete, And Nothing In Vain.

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.

But Since There Is But One Aim For The Entire State, It Follows That Education Must Be One And The Same For All, And That The Responsibility For It Must Be A Public One, Not The Private Affair Which It Now Is, Each Man Looking After His Own Children And Teaching Them Privately Whatever Private Curriculum He Thinks They Ought To Study.

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

It Is This Simplicity That Makes The Uneducated More Effective Than The Educated When Addressing Popular Audiences-makes Them, As The Poets Tell Us, 'charm The Crowd's Ears More Finely.' Educated Men Lay Down Broad General Principles; Uneducated Men Argue From Common Knowledge And Draw Obvious Conclusions.

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.

We Become Just By Performing Just Action, Temperate By Performing Temperate Actions, Brave By Performing Brave Action.

In A Race, The Quickest Runner Can Never Overtake The Slowest, Since The Pursuer Must First Reach The Point Whence The Pursued Started, So That The Slower Must Always Hold A Lead.

When People Are Friends, They Have No Need Of Justice, But When They Are Just, They Need Friendship In Addition.

The Energy Or Active Exercise Of The Mind Constitutes Life.

A Friend Is Another I.

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.

Those Who Act Receive The Prizes.

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

Black And White

Property Should Be In A General Sense Common, But As A General Rule Private... In Well-ordered States, Although Every Man Has His Own Property, Some Things He Will Place At The Disposal Of His Friends, While Of Others He Shares The Use Of Them.

If 'bounded By A Surface' Is The Definition Of Body There Cannot Be An Infinite Body Either Intelligible Or Sensible.

For It Is Not True, As Some Treatise-mongers Lay Down In Their Systems, Of The Probity Of The Speaker, That It Contributes Nothing To Persuasion; But Moral Character Nearly, I May Say, Carries With It The Most Sovereign Efficacy In Making Credible.

Man, As An Originator Of Action, Is A Union Of Desire And Intellect.

Of Mankind In General, The Parts Are Greater Than The Whole.

Character Education

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.

Where Your Talents And The Needs Of The World Cross; There Lies Your Vocation.

Two Characteristic Marks Have Above All Others Been Recognized As Distinguishing That Which Has Soul In It From That Which Has Not - Movement And Sensation.

The Best Tragedies Are Conflicts Between A Hero And His Destiny.

It Is Not Enough To Win A War; It Is More Important To Organize The Peace.

Youth Loves Honor And Victory More Than Money.

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

All Are Agreed That The Various Moral Qualities Are In A Sense Bestowed By Nature: We Are Just, And Capable Of Temperance, And Brave, And Possessed Of The Other Virtues From The Moment Of Our Birth. But Nevertheless We Expect To Find That True Goodness Is Something Different, And That The Virtues In The True Sense Come To Belong To Us In Another Way. For Even Children And Wild Animals Possess The Natural Dispositions, Yet Without Intelligence These May Manifestly Be Harmful.

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.

Misfortune Shows Those Who Are Not Really Friends.

Now All Orators Effect Their Demonstrative Proofs By Allegation Either Of Enthymems Or Examples, And, Besides These, In No Other Way Whatever.

All Learning Is Derived From Things Previously Known.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

To Leave The Number Of Births Unrestricted, As Is Done In Most States, Inevitably Causes Poverty Among The Citizens, And Poverty Produces Crime And Faction.

Happiness Is A State Of Activity.

Music Has A Power Of Forming The Character, And Should Therefore Be Introduced Into The Education Of The Young.

And What Has Come To Prevail In Democracies Is The Very Reverse Of Beneficial, In Those, That Is, Which Are Regarded As The Most Democratically Run. The Reason For This Lies In The Failure Properly To Define Liberty. For There Are Two Marks By Which Democracy Is Thought To Be Defined: "sovereignty Of The Majority" And "liberty." "just" Is Equated With What Is Equal, And The Decision Of The Majority As To What Is Equal Is Regarded As Sovereign; And Liberty Is Seen In Terms Of Doing What One Wants.

The End Is Included Among Goods Of The Soul, And Not Among External Goods.

The Investigation Of The Truth Is In One Way Hard, In Another Easy. An Indication Of This Is Found In The Fact That No One Is Able To Attain The Truth Adequately, While, On The Other Hand, No One Fails Entirely, But Everyone Says Something True About The Nature Of All Things, And While Individually They Contribute Little Or Nothing To The Truth, By The Union Of All A Considerable Amount Is Amassed.

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

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.

The Best Things Are Placed Between Extremes.

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.

That Which Is Excellent Endures.

Property Should Be In A Certain Sense Common, But, As A General Rule, Private; For, When Every One Has A Distinct Interest, Men Will Not Complain Of One Another, And They Will Make More Progress, Because Every One Will Be Attending To His Own Business.

Music Directly Represents The Passions Of The Soul. If One Listens To The Wrong Kind Of Music, He Will Become The Wrong Kind Of Person.

If What Was Said In The Ethics Is True, That The Happy Life Is The Life According To Virtue Lived Without Impediment, And That Virtue Is A Mean, Then The Life Which Is In A Mean, And In A Mean Attainable By Every One, Must Be The Best. And The Same Principles Of Virtue And Vice Are Characteristic Of Cities And Of Constitutions; For The Constitution Is In A Figure The Life Of The City.

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.

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.

All Friendly Feelings Toward Others Come From The Friendly Feelings A Person Has For Himself.

Those Who Have Been Eminent In Philosophy, Politics, Poetry, And The Arts Have All Had Tendencies Toward Melancholia.

He Who Cannot See The Truth For Himself, Nor, Hearing It From Others, Store It Away In His Mind, That Man Is Utterly Worthless.

If Happiness Is Activity In Accordance With Excellence, It Is Reasonable That It Should Be In Accordance With The Highest Excellence.

One Has No Friend Who Has Many Friends.

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

I Say That Habit's But A Long Practice, Friend, And This Becomes Men's Nature In The End.

The Only Stable Principle Of Government Is Equality According To Proportion, And For Every Man To Enjoy His Own.

The True End Of Tragedy Is To Purify The Passions.

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.

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

The Same Ideas, One Must Believe, Recur In Men's Minds Not Once Or Twice But Again And Again.

The Self-indulgent Man Craves For All Pleasant Things... And Is Led By His Appetite To Choose These At The Cost Of Everything Else.

The Body Is Most Fully Developed From Thirty To Thirty-five Years Of Age, The Mind At About Forty-nine.

The First Principle Of All Action Is Leisure.

They Should Rule Who Are Able To Rule Best.

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

Pleasure In The Job Puts Perfection In The Work.

Now Property Is Part Of A Household, And The Acquisition Of Property Part Of Household-management; For Neither Life Itself Nor The Good Life Is Possible Without A Certain Minimum Supply Of The Necessities.

It Is Possible To Fail In Many Ways...while To Succeed Is Possible Only In One Way.

Definition Of Tragedy: A Hero Destroyed By The Excess Of His Virtues

Bashfulness Is An Ornament To Youth, But A Reproach To Old Age.

Happiness Depends Upon Ourselves.

Moral Virtue Is ... A Mean Between Two Vices, That Of Excess And That Of Defect, And ... It Is No Small Task To Hit The Mean In Each Case, As It Is Not, For Example, Any Chance Comer, But Only The Geometer, Who Can Find The Center Of A Given Circle.

Laughter Is A Bodily Exercise, Precious To Health

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.

The Many Are More Incorruptible Than The Few; They Are Like The Greater Quantity Of Water Which Is Less Easily Corrupted Than A Little.

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

He Who Has Never Learned To Obey Cannot Be A Good Commander.

If Liberty And Equality, As Is Thought By Some, Are Chiefly To Be Found In Democracy, They Will Be Best Attained When All Persons Alike Share In Government To The Utmost.

Democracies Have

It Is Not Easy To Determine The Nature Of Music, Or Why Any One Should Have A Knowledge Of It.

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.

The Complete Man Must Work, Study And Wrestle.

True Happiness Flows From The Possession Of Wisdom And Virtue And Not From The Possession Of External Goods.

Man Perfected By Society Is The Best Of All Animals; He Is The Most Terrible Of All When He Lives Without Law And Without Justice. If He Finds Himself An Individual Who Cannot Live In Society, Or Who Pretends He Has Need Of Only His Own Resources Do Not Consider Him As A Member Of Humanity; He Is A Savage Beast Or A God.

Here And Elsewhere We Shall Not Obtain The Best Insight Into Things Until We Actually See Them Growing From The Beginning.

While Those Whom Devotion To Abstract Discussions Has Rendered Unobservant Of The Facts Are Too Ready To Dogmatize On The Basis Of A Few Observations.

Virtue Makes Us Aim At The Right End, And Practical Wisdom Makes Us Take The Right Means.

Democracy Appears To Be Safer And Less Liable To Revolution Than Oligarchy. For In Oligarchies There Is The Double Danger Of The Oligarchs Falling Out Among Themselves And Also With The People; But In Democracies There Is Only The Danger Of A Quarrel With The Oligarchs. No Dissension Worth Mentioning Arises Among The People Themselves. And We May Further Remark That A Government Which Is Composed Of The Middle Class More Nearly Approximates To Democracy Than To Oligarchy, And Is The Safest Of The Imperfect Forms Of Government.

Virtue Is The Golden Mean Between Two Vices, The One Of Excess And The Other Of Deficiency.

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

Where The Laws Are Not Supreme, There Demagogues Spring Up.

All Art Is Concerned With Coming Into Being.

The Moral Virtues, Then, Are Produced In Us Neither By Nature Nor Against Nature. Nature, Indeed, Prepares In Us The Ground For Their Reception, But Their Complete Formation Is The Product Of Habit.

Choice Not Chance Determines Your Destiny [my Family Motto...credited To Aristotle]

A Tragedy Is A Representation Of An Action That Is Whole And Complete And Of A Certain Magnitude. A Whole Is What Has A Beginning And Middle And End.

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?

Happiness, Whether Consisting In Pleasure Or Virtue, Or Both, Is More Often Found With Those Who Are Highly Cultivated In Their Minds And In Their Character, And Have Only A Moderate Share Of External Goods, Than Among Those Who Possess External Goods To A Useless Extent But Are Deficient In Higher Qualities.

Education And Morals Will Be Found Almost The Whole That Goes To Make A Good Man.

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.

No Notice Is Taken Of A Little Evil, But When It Increases It Strikes The Eye.

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

There's Many A Slip Between The Cup And The Lip.

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

Love Is Composed Of A Single Soul Inhabiting Two Bodies.

Happiness Is The Utilization Of One's Talents Along Lines Of Excellence.

The Happy Life Is Thought To Be One Of Excellence; Now An Excellent Life Requires Exertion, And Does Not Consist In Amusement.

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

We Should Behave To Our Friends As We Would Wish Our Friends Behave To Us

All Men Agree That A Just Distribution Must Be According To Merit In Some Sense; They Do Not All Specify The Same Sort Of Merit, But Democrats Identify It With Freemen, Supporters Of Oligarchy With Wealth (or Noble Birth), And Supporters Of Aristocracy With Excellence.

Therefore, The Good Of Man Must Be The End Of The Science Of Politics.

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

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David McCullough

Thomas Jefferson

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