Aristotle Quotes About Pleasure

• The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

  Aristotle

  Wise, Pain, Philosophical

• The greatest of all pleasures is the pleasure of learning.

  Aristotle

  Pleasure

• Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.

  Aristotle

  Believe, People, Desire

• Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

• Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

  Aristotle

  Character, Meditation, Mind

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.364, Simon and Schuster

• Some persons hold that, while it is proper for the lawgiver to encourage and exhort men to virtue on moral grounds, in the expectation that those who have had a virtuous moral upbringing will respond, yet he is bound to impose chastisement and penalties on the disobedient and ill-conditioned, and to banish the incorrigible out of the state altogether. For (they argue) although the virtuous man, who guides his life by moral ideals, will be obedient to reason, the base, whose desires are fixed on pleasure, must be chastised by pain, like a beast of burden.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Men, Law

• The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought....The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Hatred, Aim Of Education

• In educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain

  Aristotle

  Pain, Pleasure, Rudders

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Nicomachean Ethics”, p.198, Aeterna Press

• Leisure of itself gives pleasure and happiness and enjoyment of life, which are experienced, not by the busy man, but by those who have leisure.

  Aristotle

  Education, Men, Giving

  Aristotle (2015). “The Aristotle Collection [50 Books]”, Catholic Way Publishing

• For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.

  Aristotle

  Men, Soul, Lovers

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.495, Simon and Schuster

• To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men.

  Aristotle

  Education, Teaching, Men

  Aristotle (1812). “Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry”, p.108

• Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Perception, Desire

• There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Men, Opposites

• As the pleasures of the body are the ones which we most often meet with, and as all men are capable of these, these have usurped the family title; and some men think these are the only pleasures that exist, because they are the only ones which they know.

  Aristotle

  Men, Thinking, Titles

  Aristotle (1934). “The Nicomachean ethics”

• In the human species at all events there is a great diversity of pleasures. The same things delight some men and annoy others, and things painful and disgusting to some are pleasant and attractive to others.

  Aristotle

  Men, Diversity, Events

  Aristotle (1934). “The Nicomachean ethics”

• We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Opposites, Quality

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.36, Wordsworth Editions

• How strange it is that Socrates, after having made the children common, should hinder lovers from carnal intercourse only, but should permit love and familiarities between father and son or between brother and brother, than which nothing can be more unseemly, since even without them love of this sort is improper. How strange, too, to forbid intercourse for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure, as though the relationship of father and son or of brothers with one another made no difference.

  Aristotle

  Brother, Children, Father

  Aristotle, (2016). “Aristotle's Politics: Writings from the Complete Works: Politics, Economics, Constitution of Athens”, p.27, Princeton University Press

• The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23

  Aristotle

  Thinking, Pleasure, Nicomachean Ethics

• Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

  Aristotle

  Philosophical, Mean, Pleasure

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.2621, Delphi Classics

• When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.

  Aristotle

  Bars, Pleasure, Jury

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

• True happiness comes from gaining insight and growing into your best possible self. Otherwise all you're having is immediate gratification pleasure, which is fleeting and doesn't grow you as a person.

  Aristotle

  Self, Fleeting, Growing

• The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing.

  Aristotle

  Beautiful, Black And White, Color

  Aristotle, George Maximilian Anthony Grube, Donald J. Zeyl (1958). “On Poetry and Style”, p.14, Hackett Publishing

• He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.

  Aristotle

  Pleasure, Depraved, Insensible

• The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Errors, Evil

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.74

• In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.

  Aristotle

  Art, Color, Giving

  Aristotle, Demetrius (of Phaleron), Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Allen Moxon (1934). “Aristotle's Poetics: Demetrius: On Style, and Selections from Aristotle's Rhetoric, Together with Hobbes' Digest and Horace's Ars Poetica”

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