Aristotle Quotes on Freedom, Happiness, Friendship, God, Love, Education, Poetry, and More

Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself.

Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Learn to love solitude, even if you’re not a wild beast.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

In solitude, in stillness, and in quiet is when the mind is free to ponder what has been keeping you from making significant progress. In solitude, the steps required to move you forward are revealed. Everything significant in my life has been conceived in stillness and in contemplative silence.

Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.

History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.

Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.

Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating.

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

It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

Happiness belongs to the self sufficient.

The soul never thinks without a mental picture.

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

We make war that we may live in peace.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.