Aristotle Action Quotations

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.

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.

It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.

Our actions determine our dispositions.

We become just by the practice of just actions.

[Prudence] is the virtue of that part of the intellect [the calculative] to which it belongs; and . . . our choice of actions will not be right without Prudence any more than without Moral Virtue, since, while Moral Virtue enables us to achieve the end, Prudence makes us adopt the right means to the end.

If, therefore, there is any one superior in virtue and in the power of performing the best actions, him we ought to follow and obey, but he must have the capacity for action as well as virtue.

Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes.

A man is the origin of his action.

All human happiness and misery take the form of action.

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.

Happiness is a sort of action.

PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

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.

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine actions than in the nonperformance of base ones.

The quality of a life is determined by its activities

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.

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.

Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes : chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, desire.