Aristotle on Adversity Quotes

"Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence; and the things that it is concerned with are the most formidable of things."

"Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil."

"It is the mark of a man of great soul to be unable to live with his life at the mercy of another, except it be a friend."

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

"Nature does nothing uselessly."

"To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill."

"The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances."

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly."

"The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper."

"No one loves the man whom he fears."

"He who is to be a good ruler must first have been ruled."

"Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind."

"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think."

"The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival."

"Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."

"A friend to all is a friend to none."

"Happiness depends upon ourselves."

"It is not once or twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world."

"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."

"In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend, but in adversity it is most difficult of all things."

"Greatness of soul seems to be a sort of ornament of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them."

"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way."

"Wicked men are full of regrets."

"He who has overcome his fears will truly be free."

"The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul subdues its fear, and bravely faces the danger."

"Even where the danger is not very close, the fact that it is possible causes a certain amount of distress."

"To perceive is to suffer."

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."

"Even in these circumstances nobility shines through, when a person bears many great misfortunes with patience, not because he is insensitive to them but because he is of noble and great spirit."

"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light."

"For it is the nature of the many to be amenable to fear but not to a sense of honor, and to abstain from evil not because of its baseness but because of the penalties."

"For the man who is sensible of pain, and yet stands his ground against things that are painful, is the brave man."

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."