Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, whereafter Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. At eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPhilosopher
Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.
A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious, and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself . . . with incidents arousing pity and terror, with which to accomplish its purgation of these emotions.
The quality of a life is determined by its activities
Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine actions than in the nonperformance of base ones.
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
Tragedy is thus a representation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself and of some amplitude... by means of pity and fear bringing about the purgation of such emotions.
We are better able to study our neighbors than ourselves, and their actions than our own.
Actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.
We are the sum of our actions, and therefore our habits make all the difference.
Character is revealed through action.
Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.
Tragedy is an imitation not of men but of a life, an action
This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.
In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.