Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Man is armed with craft and courage, which, untamed by justice, he will most wickedly pervert, and become at once the most impious and the fiercest of monsters.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The wickedness of man is boundless; it seems at first as if a trifle would content him, but his passions invigorate by gratification; always indulged, always craving, and continually preying on him who feeds him.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality--namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.
ARISTOTLE
Nichomachean Ethics
Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
To some writers, nothing appears of so much consequence as the skillful regulation of property; because it is this much coveted object that gives birth to most disputes and most seditions.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Government and subjection, then, are things useful and necessary; they prevail everywhere, in animated as well as in brute matter; from their first origin, some natures are formed to command, and others to obey; the kinds of government and subjection varying with the differences of their objects, but all equally useful for their respective ends.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Nor does the argument about the contrary seem to be well urged. It does not follow, they say, because pain is an evil, that pleasure is a good; for the opposite to evil may be not a good, but some other evil, and both evil and good may stand opposed to something which is neither one nor the other.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Were part of the human race to be arrayed in that splendor of beauty which beams from the statues of gods, universal consent would acknowledge the rest of mankind naturally formed to be their slaves.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Be studious to preserve your reputation; if that be once lost, you are like a cancelled writing, of no value, and at best you do but survive your own funeral.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration--in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged--or he may represent all his characters as living and moving before us.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Wealth is clearly not the absolute good of which we are in search, for it is a utility, and only desirable as a means.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
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
Nobility and worth are to be found only among the few, but their opposite among the many; for there is not one man of merit and high spirit in a hundred, while there are many destitute of both to be found everywhere.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Day's Collacon