Aristotle

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

A friend is a second self.

Wit is educated insolence.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

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.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

We make war that we may live in peace.

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.

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

Anybody can become angry - that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

To love someone is to identify with them.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

The Pythagorean ... having been brought up in the study of mathematics, thought that things are numbers ... and that the whole cosmos is a scale and a number.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.

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.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

In the arena of human life the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.

To perceive is to suffer.

Law is mind without reason.

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.

When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to 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 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.

it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Happiness is a state of activity.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

Evil brings men together.

One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

To give money is an easy matter and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it, and how large and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in everyman's power nor an easy matter.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.