Aristotle

Chance has no place in that which is natural, and what happens everywhere and in every case is no matter of chance.

Between friends there is no need of justice.

Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

All arts, that is, all productive forms of knowledge, are potencies; they are originative sources of change in another thing or in the artist himself considered as other.

All men seek one goal: success or happiness. The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal - a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

All art consists in bringing something into existence.

A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.

A king rules as he ought, a tyrant as he lists; a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.

A man is his own best friend.

You should display your training in inductive reasoning against a young man, in deductive against an expert.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends?... With friends men are more able both to think and to act.

When men hear imitations, even apart from the rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in sympathy. Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know form our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representation is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.

Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy... In a word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a prosperous fool.

We must grasp the number of aims entertained by those who argue as competitors, and rivals to the death. These are five in number, refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism, and fifthly to reduce the opponent in the discussion to babbling - i.e. to constrain him to repeat himself a number of times; or it is to produce the appearance of each of these things without the reality.

We can do noble acts without ruling earth and sea.

Virtue... is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Virtue is a mean between two vices.

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine actions than in the nonperformance of base ones.

The weaker are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed of either.

Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is our actions - what we do - that we are happy or the reverse.

The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of rational wish. But desire is consequent of opinion rather than opinion on desire; for the thinking is the starting-point.

The human good turns out to be an activity of soul in conformity with excellence.

The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more.

The greatest injustices proceed from those who pursue excess, not by those who are driven by necessity.