Ponder Aristotle’s Nuggets …

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

Courage is the first of the human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion. Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

Well begun, is half done. What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do. Thou will find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.  All bad precedents spring  from good  beginnings.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.

Dignity exists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstance.

The aim of the wise in not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather heve those because we have acted right. The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to others.

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. It is the best provision for old age. All paid jobs absorbe and degrade the mind.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work  The end of labor is liesure.  I have gained this form philosophy -  I do without being commanded what others do only from the fear of the law.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. The soul never thinks without a picture.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. Nature does nothing in vain. If one way be better than another, than you  may be sure it is natures way. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

It  is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor too drunken. Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit. 

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels. The Gods too are fond of a joke.

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC). Greek philosopher, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, governmen, ethics, biology and zoolog. Together with Plato, and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle’s views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissa, although they were ultimately replaced by modern physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were only confirmed to be accurate in the nineteenth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which were incorporated in the late nineteenth century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology and the scholastic tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. All aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues Cicero described his literary style as “a river of gold”.