Aristotle's Quotes

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

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

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.

I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.

Words were different when they lived inside of you.

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Hope is a waking dream.

No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

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

Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.

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.

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

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

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.

We all fight our own private wars.

But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

To perceive is to suffer.

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

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.

And it seemed to me that Dante's face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness. Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?

I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.

I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

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

It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.

Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you're thinking but because you're feeling. Because you're feeling too much. And you can't always control the things you do when you're feeling too much.

I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.

The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.

Your smile is back.' That's what Dante said. 'Smiles are like that. They come and go.

I renamed myself Ari. If I switched the letter, my name was Air. I thought it might be a great thing to be the air. I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed.

To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.

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.

Everyone was always becoming someone else.

I don't always have to understand the people I love.

I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that's why I didn't have any friends.

Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?

Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.

This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I'm not so sure I want to return the favor.

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. {His teacher was the legendary philosopher Aristotle}

I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing.

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

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

Sometimes, all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won't believe you. After that, they'll leave you alone.

I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.

The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

It was good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until I laughed myself into becoming someone else.

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

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

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

There are worse things in the world than a boy who likes to kiss other boys.

But I had learned to hide what I felt. No, that's not true. There was no learning involved. I had been born knowing how to hide what I felt.

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

Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.

I love swimming" "I know," I said. "I love swimming," he said again. He was quiet for a little while. And then he said, "I love swimming—and you." I didn't say anything. "Swimming and you, Ari. Those are the things I love the most.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

Wit is educated insolence.

I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.

All men by nature desire to know.

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

Nature does nothing uselessly.

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.

Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

One of the secrets of the universe was that our instincts were sometimes stronger than our minds.

Do you think it will always be this way?” “What?” “I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?” I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. “I don't know,” I said. “Tomorrow.

I wished it was raining," he said. "I don't need the rain," I said. "I need you.

I didn't understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you. How could a guy live without meanness?

Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.

Maybe tears were something you caught. Like the flu.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.

Happiness is a state of activity.

Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.

Senior year. And then life. Maybe that's the way it worked. High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you -- but when you graduated, you got to write yourself. At graduation you got to collect your teacher's pens and your parents' pens and you got your own pen. And you could do all the writing. Yeah. Wouldn't that be sweet?

I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.

I knew that a part of him would never be the same. They cracked more than his ribs.

Through discipline comes freedom.

Try it again," I said. "Kiss me." "No," he said. "Kiss me." "No," And then he smiled. "You kiss me." I placed my hand on the back of his neck. I pulled him toward me. And kissed him. I kissed him. And I kissed him. And I kissed him. And I kissed him. And he kept kissing me back.

Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.

I have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we're thinking about things that we don't know we're thinking about-and those things, well, they sneak out of us in our dreams. Maybe we're like tires with too much air in them. The air has to leak out. That's what dreams are.

All this time. This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I'd always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, "A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God." The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. While there is much we may have earned--our degree and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night's sleep--all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift; it is not reward for our faithfulness, our generous disposition, or our heroic life of prayer. Even our fidelity is a gift, "If we but turn to God," said St. Augustine, "that itself is a gift of God." My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.