Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
Novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Let us define rhetoric to be: "A faculty of considering all the possible means of persuasion on every subject;" for this is the business of no one of the other arts, each of which is fit enough to inform or persuade respecting its own subject; medicine, for instance, on what conduces to health or sickness; and geometry, on the subject of relations incidental to magnitudes; and arithmetic, on the subject of numbers; and in the same way the remaining arts and sciences. But rhetoric, as I may say, seems able to consider the means of persuasion on any given subject whatsoever. And hence I declare it to have for its province, as an art, no particular limited class of subjects.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
On a similar principle they consider that to know right and wrong is nothing clever, because what the laws speak about it cannot be hard to understand. But this is not justice, except incidentally: it is when actions are done or awards are made in a certain way that they become just.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type--not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
But tangible differ from visible and sonorous impressions, in that the latter are perceived by the medium acting in some way upon us, while the former are perceived, not by, but together with, the medium, like a man who is struck through his shield--for it is not the shield which, having been struck, strikes him, but the shield and he are simultaneously struck together.
ARISTOTLE
On the Vital Principle
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Communities could not subsist without foresight to discern, as well as exertion to effectuate the measures requisite for their safety. Men capable of discerning those measures, are made for authority; and men merely capable of effectuating them by bodily labor, are made for obedience.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
It may then be asked whether there is but one mode of impression for all the senses, seeing that taste and touch are acted upon by contact, and the other senses from a distance? But yet this is a seeming difference only, for we perceive the hard and the soft, as we do the odorous, the sonorous, and the visible, through media; with this difference, that the former impressions are made by objects close to, and the latter by objects at a distance from us. On which account, as we perceive all things through a medium, the medium, in the case of bodies close to us, escapes our attention; but if, as we have already said, we could be sensible of all tangible impressions through a membraneous substance, without our being conscious of their having been so transmitted, we should then be situated as we now are, when in water or air; for so situated, we seem to touch bodies directly, and to have no impression from them through a medium.
ARISTOTLE
On the Vital Principle
Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.
ARISTOTLE
Nichomachean Ethics
Wickedness is nourished by lust.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Whether government be a good or a bad thing, it is fair that men of equal abilities and virtues should equally share in it; that they should receive the advantage of it as their right, or bear the burden of it as their duty.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The hand or foot, when separated from the body, retains indeed its name, but totally changes its nature, because it is completely divested of its uses and of its powers.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
What, then, is in each case the chief good? Surely it will be that to which all else that is done is but a means. And this in medicine will be health, and in tactics victory, and in architecture a house, and so forth in other cases.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
All learning is derived from things previously known.
ARISTOTLE
The Nicomachean Ethics
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.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
A family, to be complete, must consist of freemen and slaves; and as every complex object naturally resolves itself into simple elements, we must consider the elements of a family--the master and servant, the husband and wife, the father and children; what all of these are in themselves, and what are the relations which they naturally and properly bear to each other.
ARISTOTLE
Politics