Aristotle Quotes on Life
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics asks what the best human life is, and the answer is the lifelong activity of the rational soul in accordance with virtue, exercised within a well-ordered political community and supported by some external goods. Book X argues — controversially — that the most complete eudaimonia is the contemplative life of the philosopher, in which the highest part of the soul exercises its proper activity on the highest objects. The active political life of practical wisdom and moral virtue is a happy life in a fuller human sense, but the contemplative life, Aristotle claims, is divine in proportion as anything human can be.
Quotes
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Attributed to Aristotle:
“The good for man is an activity of the soul in conformity with virtue.”
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“Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies. -
“Hope is the dream of a waking man.”
p. 187 -
Attributed to Aristotle:
“The end of labour is to gain leisure.”
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Attributed to Aristotle:
“Happiness is found to be something perfect and self-sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed.”