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Aristotle
The philosophers of ancient Greece
were years ahead of their time, as the philosophers
who have followed
have done relatively little to advance their ideas and concepts--they've
expanded
some ideas and taken
a few in different directions, but the knowledge
shown
by Aristotle about human nature and the
meaning of life
still
stands strong today as insightful, truthful, and relevant.
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Happiness is the meaning
and the purpose of life,
the whole aim and end of human existence.
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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.
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Happiness
depends upon ourselves.
Happiness
itself is sufficient cause. Beautiful things are right and true;
so beautiful
actions are those pleasing to the gods. Wise people 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 person's own breast.
Trust thyself.
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A state is
not a mere society, having a common place, established
for the
prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. .
. Political society
exists for the sake of noble actions,
and not of mere companionship.
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The
ideal person bears the accidents of life with dignity
and grace,
making
the best of circumstances.
The beauty
of the soul shines out when people bear with composure
one heavy
mischance after another, not because they do not feel them,
but because
they are people of high and heroic temper.
Different
people seek after happiness in different ways
and by different means,
and so make for
themselves different modes of life.
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Without
friends no one would choose to live, though they had all other goods. |
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Friends
are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly,
to
attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action;
to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.
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Education
is the best provision for old age. |
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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 the government to the utmost. |
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It is
the nature of desire not to be satisfied,
and most people live only for the gratification of it.
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Honors
and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action. |
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It is easy
to fly into a passion. . . but it is not easy to be angry
with the right
person, in the right way, and at the right time.
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All
who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced
that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. |
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We
should behave to our friends as we would
wish our friends to behave to
us. |
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Nature does nothing
uselessly.
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In
all things of nature
there is something of the marvelous. |
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I have gained this by
philosophy: that I do without being
commanded
what others do only
from fear of the law. |
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To enjoy
the things we ought and to hate the things we ought
has the greatest
bearing on excellence of character. |
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Quality
is not an act. It is a habit.
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coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward. |
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We
become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing
temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
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Dignity
consists not in possessing honors,
but in the consciousness that
we deserve them. |
Well begun is half done. |
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With regard to
excellence, it is not enough to know,
but we must try to have and use it. |
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To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is
to
be conscious of our own existence. |
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I count them
braver who overcome their desires
than those who overcome their enemies.
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It
is the mark of an educated mind to be able
to entertain a thought without accepting it. |
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Aristotle
384—322 , Greek
philosopher, b. Stagira. He is sometimes called the Stagirite.
Aristotle's father,
Nicomachus, was a noted physician. Aristotle studied (367—347 ) under
Plato at the Academy and there wrote many dialogues that were praised
for their eloquence. Only fragments of these dialogues are extant. He
tutored (342—c.339 ) Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court, left
to live in Stagira, and then returned to Athens. In 335 he opened a
school in the Lyceum; some distinguished members of the Academy followed
him. His practice of lecturing in the Lyceum's portico, or covered
walking place (peripatos), gave his school the name Peripatetic.
During the anti-Macedonian agitation after Alexander's death, Aristotle
fled in 323 to Chalcis, where he died.
Aristotle's extant
writings consist largely of his written versions of his lectures; some
passages appear to be interpolations of notes made by his students; the
texts were edited and given their present form by Andronicus of Rhodes
in the 1st cent. Chief among them are the Organum, consisting of
six treatises on logic; Physics; Metaphysics; De Anima [on the
soul]; Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics; De
Poetica [poetics]; Rhetoric; and a series of works on biology
and physics. In the late 19th cent. his Constitution of Athens,
an account of Athenian government, was found.
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