Aristotle

1. Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
2. The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
3. The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
4. In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
5. Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
6. What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
7. No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
8. Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
9. The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
10. There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
11. Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
12. What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
13. He who hath many friends hath none.
14. Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
15. Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
16. Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
17. The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
18. Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
19. 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 easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
20. The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
21. Change in all things is sweet.
22. All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
23. Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
24. 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.
25. Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
26. Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
27. Wit is educated insolence.
28. Hope is the dream of a waking man.
29. Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
30. Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
31. The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
32. All men by nature desire knowledge.
33. I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
34. Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
35. Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
36. Man is by nature a political animal.
37. The secret to humour is surprise.
38. He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
39. In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
40. Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
41. Well begun is half done?
42. There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
43. For though we love the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.
44. Bad men are full of repentance.
45. For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
46. It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
47. Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
48. The end of labor is to gain leisure.
49. A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.
50. We make war that we may live in peace.
51. The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of nature’s not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.
52. It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator are to create in men this benevolent disposition.
53. 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.
54. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
55. Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
56. The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
57. Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
58. A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
59. Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
60. Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
61. If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.
62. Friendship is essentially a partnership.
63. No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
64. The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
65. The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
66. The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.
67. Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou does every act in life as though it were thy last.
68. He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
69. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
70. Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.
71. Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
72. Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.
73. No one loves the man whom he fears.
74. We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
75. A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
76. It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
77. Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
78. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold.
79. Nature does nothing in vain.
80. Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
81. Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
82. The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.
83. All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
84. Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
85. For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.
86. Most people would rather give than get affection.
87. No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
88. Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
89. Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.
90. It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.
91. We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
92. The law is reason, free from passion.
93. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
94. Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
95. The soul never thinks without a picture.
96. Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.
97. The gods too are fond of a joke.
98. It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.
99. Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.
100. He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.
101. It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
102. The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
103. 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.
104. In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
105. To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
106. Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
107. 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 without the iron or gold.
108. Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.
109. 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.
110. Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
111. Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
112. Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
113. But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
114. The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
115. What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
116. Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.