The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play—which is the better way and shows the better poet....

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

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. Aristotle speaks plainly to this purpose, saying, ‘that the institution of youth should be accommodated to that form of government under which they live;...

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Some [jests] are becoming to a gentleman, others are not; see that you choose such as become you. Irony better befits a gentleman than buffoonery; the ironical man jokes to amuse himself, the buffoon to...

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

Happiness is activity of soul.

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true...

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent...

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of action.

Happiness is a state of activity.

To seek for utility everywhere is entirely unsuited to men that are great-souled and free.

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

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole,...

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

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...

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

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act…

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

All terrible things are more terrible if they give us no chance of retrieving a blunder—either no chance at all, or only one that depends on our enemies and not ourselves. Those things are also...

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

Friendship is essentially a partnership.

The eyes of some persons are large, others small, and others of a moderate size; the last-mentioned are the best. And some eyes are projecting, some deep-set, and some moderate, and those which are deep-set...

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring...

Fame means being respected by everybody, or having some quality that is desired by all men, or by most, or by the good, or by the wise.

Happiness is a quality of the soul…not a function of one’s material circumstances.

Nature does nothing uselessly.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a...

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.

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

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions … The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.

All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world