Nicomachean Ethics Quotes

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

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”

“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.”

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

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

“That which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results.”

“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”

“While both are dear, Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.”

“But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.”

“My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside.”

“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”

“The science which has to do with nature clearly concerns itself for the most part with bodies and magnitudes and their properties and movements, but also with the principles of this sort of substance, as many as they may be.”

“[U]niversal is known according to reason, but that which is particular, according to sense...”

“[A]ll things as subsist from nature appear to contain in themselves a principle of motion and permanency; some according to place, others according to increase and diminuation; and others according to change in quality.”

“[I]t is impossible for motion to subsist without place, and void, and time.”

“[T]hey pronounce absurdly who thus speak, as the Pythagoreans assert: for at the same time they make the infinite to be essence, and distribute it into parts.”

“[I]t is impossible that each of the elements should be infinite. For that is body which has interval on all sides; and that is infinite which has extension without bound.”

“The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.”

“That body is heavier than another which, in an equal bulk, moves downward quicker.”

“The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep, and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals.”

“The essential nature (concerning the soul) cannot be corporeal, yet it is also clear that this soul is present in a particular bodily part, and this one of the parts having control over the rest (heart).”

“Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end.”

“Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.”

“Just as it sometimes happens that deformed offspring are produced by deformed parents, and sometimes not, so the offspring produced by a female are sometimes female, sometimes not, but male, because the female is as it were a deformed male.”

“Music directly represents the passion of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.”

“If a man knows what it is right to do, he does not require a formal reason. And a person that has been thus trained, either possesses these first principles already, or can easily acquire them. (Bk I, Ch II)”

“Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.”

“The majority of mankind and people who lack refinement conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they approve a life of sensual enjoyment. (Bk. 1, Chapter III)”