Aristotle’s views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the nineteenth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was 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, especially Eastern Orthodox theology, and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. 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”), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.

1. A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

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

3. All men by nature desire knowledge.

4. Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

5. At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

6. Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

7. Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

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

9. You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

10. Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

11. Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

12. Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

13. Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

14. For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

15. Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

16. Happiness depends upon ourselves.

17. Hope is a waking dream.

18. Hope is the dream of a waking man.

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

20. If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

21. It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

22. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

23. Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

24. Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

25. The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

26. The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

27. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

28. Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

29. Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.