Goodness is to do good to the deserving and love the good and hate the wicked, and not to be eager to inflict punishment or take vengeance, but to be gracious and kindly and forgiving.
All men, or most men, wish what is noble but choose what is profitable; and while it is noble to render a service not with an eye to receiving one in return, it is profitable to receive one. One ought therefore, if one can, to return the equivalent of services received, and to do so willingly; for one ought not to make a man one's friend if one is unwilling to return his favors.
The right constitutions, three in number- kingship, aristocracy, and polity- and the deviations from these, likewise three in number - tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity.
Should a man live underground, and there converse with the works of art and mechanism, and should afterwards be brought up into the open day, and see the several glories of the heaven and earth, he would immediately pronounce them the work of such a Being as we define God to be.
The soul of animals is characterized by two faculties, (a) the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and (b) the faculty of originating local movement.
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the first move-and he, in turn, waits for you.
The ridiculous is produced by any defect that is unattended by pain, or fatal consequences; thus, an ugly and deformed countenance does not fail to cause laughter, if it is not occasioned by pain.
Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common; or, at any rate, they care for it only to the extent to which each is individually concerned.
The same thing may have all the kinds of causes, e.g. the moving cause of a house is the art or the builder, the final cause is the function it fulfils, the matter is earth and stones, and the form is the definitory formula.