Background Image

...

Those Who Have The Command Of The Arms In A Country Are Masters Of The State, And Have It In Their Power To Make What Revolutions They Please. [thus,] There Is No End To Observations On The Difference Between The Measures Likely To Be Pursued By A Minister Backed By A Standing Army, And Those Of A Court Awed By The Fear Of An Armed People.

-Aristotle

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Those Who Have The

Aristotle

...

Those Who Have The Command Of The Arms In A Country Are Masters Of The State, And Have It In Their Power To Make What Revolutions They Please. [thus,] There Is No End To Observations On The Difference Between The Measures Likely To Be Pursued By A Minister Backed By A Standing Army, And Those Of A Court Awed By The Fear Of An Armed People.

Views: 5743

Topic

More From Aristotle

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

The Light Of The Day Is Followed By Night, As A Shadow Follows A Body.

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.

As To Adultery, Let It Be Held Disgraceful, In General, For Any Man Or Woman To Be Found In Any Way Unfaithful When They Are Married, And Called Husband And Wife. If During The Time Of Bearing Children Anything Of The Sort Occur, Let The Guilty Person Be Punished With A Loss Of Privileges In Proportion To The Offense.

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

Greatness Of Spirit Is Accompanied By Simplicity And Sincerity.

Today, See If You Can Stretch Your Heart And Expand Your Love So That It Touches Not Only Those To Whom You Can Give It Easily, But Also To Those Who Need It So Much.

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

The Fool Tells Me His Reason; The Wise Man Persuades Me With My Own.

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 Guest Will Judge Better Of A Feast Than The Cook

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.

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

Yellow-colored Objects Appear To Be Gold

The Beginning Of Reform Is Not So Much To Equalize Property As To Train The Noble Sort Of Natures Not To Desire More, And To Prevent The Lower From Getting More.

He Who Is By Nature Not His Own But Another's Man Is By Nature A Slave.

If One Way Be Better Than Another, That You May Be Sure Is Nature's Way.

He Then Alone Will Strictly Be Called Brave Who Is Fearless Of A Noble Death, And Of All Such Chances As Come Upon Us With Sudden Death In Their Train.

Since The Branch Of Philosophy On Which We Are At Present Engaged Differs From The Others In Not Being A Subject Of Merely Intellectual Interest — I Mean We Are Not Concerned To Know What Goodness Essentially Is, But How We Are To Become Good Men, For This Alone Gives The Study Its Practical Value — We Must Apply Our Minds To The Solution Of The Problems Of Conduct.

A Friend Is A Second Self, So That Our Consciousness Of A Friend's Existence...makes Us More Fully Conscious Of Our Own Existence.

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

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.

In All Things Of Nature There Is Something Of The Marvelous.

It Is Likely That Unlikely Things Should Happen

Philosophy Begins With Wonder.

Most People Would Rather Give Than Get Affection.

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.

The Soul Consists Of Two Parts, One Irrational And The Other Capable Of Reason. (whether These Two Parts Are Really Distinct In The Sense That The Parts Of The Body Or Of Any Other Divisible Whole Are Distinct, Or Whether Though Distinguishable In Thought As Two They Are Inseparable In Reality, Like The Convex And Concave Of A Curve, Is A Question Of No Importance For The Matter In Hand.)

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

Actual Knowledge Is Identical With Its Object: In The Individual, Potential Knowledge Is In Time Prior To Actual Knowledge, But In The Universe As A Whole It Is Not Prior Even In Time. Mind Is Not At One Time Knowing And At Another Not. When Mind Is Set Free From Its Present Conditions It Appears As Just What It Is And Nothing More: This Alone Is Immortal And Eternal (we Do Not, However, Remember Its Former Activity Because, While Mind In This Sense Is Impassible, Mind As Passive Is Destructible), And Without It Nothing Thinks.

Now It Is Evident That The Form Of Government Is Best In Which Every Man, Whoever He Is, Can Act Best And Live Happily.

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.'

No Science Ever Defends Its First Principles.

The Form Of Government Is A Democracy When The Free, Who Are Also Poor And The Majority, Govern, And An Oligarchy When The Rich And The Noble Govern, They Being At The Same Time Few In Number.

Authority Is No Source For Truth.

A Man Is His Own Best Friend; Therefore He Ought To Love Himself Best.

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

Education Is The Best Provision For Old Age.

We Are What We Do. Excellence, Therefore, Is Not An Act, But A Habit.

Wit Is Well-bred Insolence.

Before You Heal The Body You Must First Heal The Mind

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.

...perhaps There Is Some Element Of Good Even In The Simple Act Of Living, So Long As The Evils Of Existence Do Not Preponderate Too Heavily.

We Assume Therefore That Moral Virtue Is The Quality Of Acting In The Best Way In Relation To Pleasures And Pains, And That Vice Is The Opposite.

The Saying Of Protagoras Is Like The Views We Have Mentioned; He Said That Man Is The Measure Of All Things, Meaning Simply That That Which Seems To Each Man Assuredly Is. If This Is So, It Follows That The Same Thing Both Is And Is Not, And Is Bad And Good, And That The Contents Of All Other Opposite Statements Are True, Because Often A Particular Thing Appears Beautiful To Some And Ugly To Others, And That Which Appears To Each Man Is The Measure

Great Is The Good Fortune Of A State In Which The Citizens Have A Moderate And Sufficient Property.

The First Essential Responsibility Of The State Is Control Of The Market-place: There Must Be Some Official Charged With The Duty Of Seeing That Honest Dealing And Good Order Prevail. For One Of The Well-nigh Essential Activities Of All States Is The Buying And Selling Of Goods To Meet Their Mutual Basic Needs; This Is The Quickest Way To Self-sufficiency, Which Seems To Be What Moves Men To Combine Under A Single Constitution.

The Legislator Should Direct His Attention Above All To The Education Of Youth; For The Neglect Of Education Does Harm To The Constitution. The Citizen Should Be Molded To Suit The Form Of Government Under Which He Lives. For Each Government Has A Peculiar Character Which Originally Formed And Which Continues To Preserve It. The Character Of Democracy Creates Democracy, And The Character Of Oligarchy Creates Oligarchy.

A Constitution Is The Arrangement Of Magistracies In A State, Especially Of The Highest Of All. The Government Is Everywhere Sovereign In The State, And The Constitution Is In Fact The Government.

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

Since Music Has So Much To Do With The Molding Of Character, It Is Necessary That We Teach It To Our Children.

You Should Never Think Without An Image.

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.

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

To Be Conscious That We Are Perceiving Or Thinking Is To Be Conscious Of Our Own Existence.

Just As A Royal Rule, If Not A Mere Name, Must Exist By Virtue Of Some Great Personal Superiority In The King, So Tyranny, Which Is The Worst Of Governments, Is Necessarily The Farthest Removed From A Well-constituted Form; Oligarchy Is Little Better, For It Is A Long Way From Aristocracy, And Democracy Is The Most Tolerable Of The Three.

So We Must Lay It Down That The Association Which Is A State Exists Not For The Purpose Of Living Together But For The Sake Of Noble Actions. Those Who Contribute Most To This Kind Of Association Are For That Very Reason Entitled To A Larger Share In The State Than Those Who, Though They May Be Equal Or Even Superior In Free Birth And In Family, Are Inferior In The Virtue That Belongs To A Citizen. Similarly They Are Entitled To A Larger Share Than Those Who Are Superior In Riches But Inferior In Virtue.

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.

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.

Being A Father Is The Most Rewarding Thing A Man Whose Career Has Plateaued Can Do.

Happiness Is An Activity Of The Soul In Accordance With Virtue

Nicomachean Ethics

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.

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

A Friend Is A Second Self.

The Souls Ability To Nourish Itself Lies In The Heart.

Plants, Again, Inasmuch As They Are Without Locomotion, Present No Great Variety In Their Heterogeneous Pacts. For, When The Functions Are But Few, Few Also Are The Organs Required To Effect Them. ... Animals, However, That Not Only Live But Perceive, Present A Great Multiformity Of Pacts, And This Diversity Is Greater In Some Animals Than In Others, Being Most Varied In Those To Whose Share Has Fallen Not Mere Life But Life Of High Degree. Now Such An Animal Is Man.

Evil Draws Men Together.

Laws, When Good, Should Be Supreme; And That The Magistrate Or Magistrates Should Regulate Those Matters Only On Which The Laws Are Unable To Speak With Precision Owing To The Difficulty Of Any General Principle Embracing All Particulars.

Your Happiness Depends On You Alone.

No One Who Desires To Become Good Will Become Good Unless He Does Good Things.

Our Characters Are The Result Of Our Conduct.

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.

[this Element], The Seat Of The Appetites And Of Desire In General, Does In A Sense Participate In Principle, As Being Amenable And Obedient To It

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

A Promise Made Must Be A Promise Kept.

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

Some Believe It To Be Just Friends Wanting, As If To Be Healthy Enough To Wish Health.

Imagination Is A Sort Of Faint Perception.

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.

Greatness Of Soul Seems Therefore To Be As It Were A Crowning Ornament Of The Virtues; It Enhances Their Greatness, And It Cannot Exist Without Them. Hence It Is Hard To Be Truly Great-souled, For Greatness Of Soul Is Impossible Without Moral Nobility.

The Greater The Length, The More Beautiful Will The Piece Be By Reason Of Its Size, Provided That The Whole Be Perspicuous.

Worms Are The Intestines Of The Earth.

Happiness Depends On Ourselves.

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.

A Gentleman Is Not Disturbed By Anything

Anyone, Without Any Great Penetration, May Distinguish The Dispositions Consequent On Wealth; For Its Possessors Are Insolent And Overbearing, From Being Tainted In A Certain Way By The Getting Of Their Wealth. For They Are Affected As Though They Possessed Every Good; Since Wealth Is A Sort Of Standard Of The Worth Of Other Things; Whence Every Thing Seems To Be Purchasable By It.

Therefore, Even The Lover Of Myth Is A Philosopher; For Myth Is Composed Of Wonder.

Maybe Crying Is A Means Of Cleaning Yourself Out Emotionally. Or Maybe It's Your Last Resort; The Only Way To Express Yourself When Words Fail, The Same As When You Were A Baby And Had No Words.

Time Past, Even God Is Deprived Of The Power Of Recalling.

Justice Is The Loveliest And Health Is The Best. But The Sweetest To Obtain Is The Heart's Desire.

Should A Man Live Underground, And There Converse With The Works Of Art And Mechanism, And Should Afterwards Be Brought Up Into The Open Day, And See The Several Glories Of The Heaven And Earth, He Would Immediately Pronounce Them The Work Of Such A Being As We Define God To Be.

Evidence From Torture May Be Considered Completely Untrustworthy

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.

I Seek To Bring Forth What You Almost Already Know.

Man By Nature Wants To Know.

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.

The Final Cause, Then, Produces Motion Through Being Loved.

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.

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.

Excellence Is Never An Accident. It Is Always The Result Of High Intention, Sincere Effort, And Intelligent Execution; It Represents The Wise Choice Of Many Alternatives - Choice, Not Chance, Determines Your Destiny.

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.

For Knowing Is Spoken Of In Three Ways: It May Be Either Universal Knowledge Or Knowledge Proper To The Matter In Hand Or Actualising Such Knowledge; Consequently Three Kinds Of Error Also Are Possible.

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.

If Purpose, Then, Is Inherent In Art, So Is It In Nature Also. The Best Illustration Is The Case Of A Man Being His Own Physician, For Nature Is Like That - Agent And Patient At Once.

As The Pleasures Of The Body Are The Ones Which We Most Often Meet With, And As All Men Are Capable Of These, These Have Usurped The Family Title; And Some Men Think These Are The Only Pleasures That Exist, Because They Are The Only Ones Which They Know.

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.

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

Black And White

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.

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.

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

Soul And Body, I Suggest React Sympathetically Upon Each Other. A Change In The State Of The Soul Produces A Change In The Shape Of The Body And Conversely, A Change In The Shape Of The Body Produces A Change In The State Of The Soul.

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.

We Must Become Just Be Doing Just Acts.

This Body Is Not A Home, But An Inn; And That Only For A Short Time. Seneca Friendship Is Composed Of A Single Soul Inhabiting Two Bodies.

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.

No One Finds Fault With Defects Which Are The Result Of Nature.

Goodness Is To Do Good To The Deserving And Love The Good And Hate The Wicked, And Not To Be Eager To Inflict Punishment Or Take Vengeance, But To Be Gracious And Kindly And Forgiving.

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.

He Who Thus Considers Things In Their First Growth And Origin ... Will Obtain The Clearest View Of Them.

There Is Honor In Being A Dog.

A Thing Chosen Always As An End And Never As A Means We Call Absolutely Final. Now Happiness Above All Else Appears To Be Absolutely Final In This Sense, Since We Always Choose It For Its Own Sake And Never As A Means To Something Else.

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.

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

A Sense Is What Has The Power Of Receiving Into Itself The Sensible Forms Of Things Without The Matter, In The Way In Which A Piece Of Wax Takes On The Impress Of A Signet-ring Without The Iron Or Gold.

The Business Of Every Art Is To Bring Something Into Existence, And The Practice Of An Art Involves The Study Of How To Bring Into Existence Something Which Is Capable Of Having Such An Existence And Has Its Efficient Cause In The Maker And Not In Itself.

That Education Should Be Regulated By Law And Should Be An Affair Of State Is Not To Be Denied, But What Should Be The Character Of This Public Education, And How Young Persons Should Be Educated, Are Questions Which Remain To Be Considered. As Things Are, There Is Disagreement About The Subjects. For Mankind Are By No Means Agreed About The Things To Be Taught, Whether We Look To Virtue Or The Best Life. Neither Is It Clear Whether Education Is More Concerned With Intellectual Or With Moral Virtue.

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.

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.

Virtue Means Doing The Right Thing, In Relation To The Right Person, At The Right Time, To The Right Extent, In The Right Manner, And For The Right Purpose. Thus, To Give Money Away Is Quite A Simple Task, But For The Act To Be Virtuous, The Donor Must Give To The Right Person, For The Right Purpose, In The Right Amount, In The Right Manner, And At The Right Time.

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.

Men Become Richer Not Only By Increasing Their Existing Wealth But Also By Decreasing Their Expenditure.

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 High-minded Man Must Care More For The Truth Than For What People Think.

A Friend Is Simply One Soul In Two Bodies.

Happiness Lies In Virtuous Activity, And Perfect Happiness Lies In The Best Activity, Which Is Contemplative

If They Do Not Share Equally Enjoyments And Toils, Those Who Labor Much And Get Little Will Necessarily Complain Of Those Who Labor Little And Receive Or Consume Much. But Indeed There Is Always A Difficulty In Men Living Together And Having All Human Relations In Common, But Especially In Their Having Common Property.

We Are What We Frequently Do.

Personal Growth

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.

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 Knowledge Of The Soul Admittedly Contributes Greatly To The Advance Of Truth In General, And, Above All, To Our Understanding Of Nature, For The Soul Is In Some Sense The Principle Of Animal Life.

Everybody Loves A Thing More If It Has Cost Him Trouble: For Instance Those Who Have Made Money Love Money More Than Those Who Have Inherited It.

Those That Deem Politics Beneath Their Dignity Are Doomed To Be Governed By Those Of Lesser Talents.

Actions Determine What Kind Of Characteristics Are Developed.

Characteristics

Prosperity Makes Friends And Adversity Tries Them. A True Friend Is One Soul In Two Bodies

It Is Not The Possessions But The Desires Of Mankind Which Require To Be Equalized.

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

In The Human Species At All Events There Is A Great Diversity Of Pleasures. The Same Things Delight Some Men And Annoy Others, And Things Painful And Disgusting To Some Are Pleasant And Attractive To Others.

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 Attainment Of Truth Is Then The Function Of Both The Intellectual Parts Of The Soul. Therefore Their Respective Virtues Are Those Dispositions Which Will Best Qualify Them To Attain Truth.

Republics Decline Into Democracies And Democracies Degenerate Into Despotisms.

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

Nothing In Life Is More Necessary Than Friendship.

For Imitation Is Natural To Man From His Infancy. Man Differs From Other Animals Particularly In This, That He Is Imitative, And Acquires His Rudiments Of Knowledge In This Way; Besides, The Delight In It Is Universal.

Democracy Arose From Men's Thinking That If They Are Equal In Any Respect They Are Equal Absolutely.

Worthless Persons Appointed To Have Supreme Control Of Weighty Affairs Do A Lot Of Damage.

A True Friend Is One Soul In Two Bodies.

There Are Branches Of Learning And Education Which We Must Study Merely With A View To Leisure Spent In Intellectual Activity, And These Are To Be Valued For Their Own Sake; Whereas Those Kinds Of Knowledge Which Are Useful In Business Are To Be Deemed Necessary, And Exist For The Sake Of Other Things.

We Must Not Feel A Childish Disgust At The Investigations Of The Meaner Animals. For There Is Something Marvelous In All Natural Things.

It Seems That Ambition Makes Most People Wish To Be Loved Rather Than To Love Others.

He Who Has Overcome His Fears Will Truly Be Free.

That Which Is Impossible And Probable Is Better Than That Which Is Possible And Improbable.

You Will Never Do Anything In This World Without Courage. It Is The Greatest Quality Of The Mind Next To Honor.

There Also Appears To Be Another Element In The Soul, Which, Though Irrational, Yet In A Manner Participates In Rational Principle.

It Is No Easy Task To Be Good.

The Best Things Are Placed Between Extremes.

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.

The Greatest Thing By Far Is To Be A Master Of Metaphor.

The Vigorous Are No Better Than The Lazy During One Half Of Life, For All Men Are Alike When Asleep.

There Is Only One Condition In Which We Can Imagine Managers Not Needing Subordinates, And Masters Not Needing Slaves. This Condition Would Be That Each (inanimate) Instrument Could Do Its Own Work.

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.

If The Poor, For Example, Because They Are More In Number, Divide Among Themselves The Property Of The Rich,- Is Not This Unjust? . . This Law Of Confiscation Clearly Cannot Be Just.

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.

Happiness Involves Engagement In Activities That Promote One's Highest Potentials.

The Greatest Virtues Are Those Which Are Most Useful To Other Persons.

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

Now If There Is Any Gift Of The Gods To Men, It Is Reasonable That Happiness Should Be God-given, And Most Surely God-given Of All Human Things Inasmuch As It Is The Best. But This Question Would Perhaps Be More Appropriate To Another Inquiry; Happiness Seems, However, Even If It Is Not God-sent But Comes As A Result Of Virtue And Some Process Of Learning And Training, To Be Among The Most God-like Things; For That Which Is The Prize And End Of Virtue Seems To Be The Best Thing In The World, And Something God-like And Blessed.

Think As Wise Men Do, But Speak As The Common People Do.

Quality Is Not An Act, It Is A Habit.

We May Assume The Superiority Ceteris Paribus Of The Demonstration Which Derives From Fewer Postulates Or Hypotheses - In Short, From Fewer Premises.

The Brave Man, If He Be Compared With The Coward, Seems Foolhardy; And, If With The Foolhardy Man, Seems A Coward.

It Has Been Well Said That 'he Who Has Never Learned To Obey Cannot Be A Good Commander.' The Two Are Not The Same, But The Good Citizen Ought To Be Capable Of Both; He Should Know How To Govern Like A Freeman, And How To Obey Like A Freeman - These Are The Virtues Of A Citizen.

All Art, All Education, Can Be Merely A Supplement To Nature.

Teaching Is The Highest Form Of Understanding.

Greatness Of Spirit Is To Bear Finely Both Good Fourtune And Bad, Honor And Disgrace, And Not To Think Highly Of Luxury Or Attention Or Power Or Victories In Contests, And To Possess A Certain Depth And Magnitude Of Spirit.

Happiness Is Something Final And Complete In Itself, As Being The Aim And End Of All Practical Activities Whatever .... Happiness Then We Define As The Active Exercise Of The Mind In Conformity With Perfect Goodness Or Virtue.

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

Happiness Is The Meaning And The Purpose Of Life, The Whole Aim And End Of Human Existence.

Mothers Are Fonder Than Fathers Of Their Children Because They Are More Certain They Are Their Own.

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

When We Deliberate It Is About Means And Not Ends.

As For The Story, Whether The Poet Takes It Ready Made Or Constructs It For Himself, He Should First Sketch Its General Outline, And Then Fill In The Episodes And Amplify In Detail.

We, On The Other Hand, Must Take For Granted That The Things That Exist By Nature Are, Either All Or Some Of Them, In Motion.

Why Is It That All Men Who Are Outstanding In Philosophy, Poetry Or The Arts Are Melancholic?

One Citizen Differs From Another, But The Salvation Of The Community Is The Common Business Of Them All. This Community Is The Constitution; The Virtue Of The Citizen Must Therefore Be Relative To The Constitution Of Which He Is A Member.

The Soul Never Thinks Without A Picture.

Man By Nature Desires To Know.

Since We Think We Understand When We Know The Explanation, And There Are Four Types Of Explanation (one, What It Is To Be A Thing; One, That If Certain Things Hold It Is Necessary That This Does; Another, What Initiated The Change; And Fourth, The Aim), All These Are Proved Through The Middle Term.

A Common Danger Unites Even The Bitterest Enemies.

There Is Nothing Unequal As The Equal Treatment Of Unequals.

Equal Treatment

Trending Author

Charles Baudelaire

Category