Aristotle
Greek philosopher and polymath, student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great, founder of the Lyceum (335 BCE), and author of one of the most encyclopedic surviving bodies of work in the history of human thought — covering logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, biology, physics, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, and meteorology. Born 384 BCE in Stagira on the Chalcidic peninsula, he entered Plato's Academy in Athens at seventeen and remained for twenty years before moving on to tutor Alexander, then returning to Athens to found his own school. His ethical masterwork Nicomachean Ethics established eudaimonia ('flourishing,' often translated as 'happiness') as the highest human good — to be pursued through the cultivation of virtue understood as a 'mean' between extremes, lived in a polity, and culminating in the contemplative life. He died in 322 BCE on Euboea after fleeing Athens during the anti-Macedonian backlash that followed Alexander's death.
quotes in library
Quotes by Aristotle
105 quotes“This is the moral education of a lifetime.”
“Friendship is one soul in two bodies.”
“There are three types of friendship: those of utility, those of pleasure, and those of virtue.”
“Friendships of utility end when the use ends.”
“Nor one day a complete life.”
“Friendships of pleasure end when the pleasure ends.”
“Only friendships of virtue endure.”
“For virtue does not end. It deepens.”
“Therefore choose your closest friends from among the virtuous.”
“And cultivate virtue in yourself, so that you can be such a friend to others.”
“Without friends, no one would choose to live, even if he had all other goods.”
“This is one of the deepest insights of moral philosophy.”
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.”
“Education is the best provision for old age.”
“It is what no one can take from you.”
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
“All human beings by nature desire to know.”
“In a complete life.”
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