Aristotle Quotes About 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 fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

  Aristotle

  Fear, Tragedy, Catharsis

  Poetics ch. 6, 1449b

• The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.

  Aristotle

  Anger, Men, Judging

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Rhetoric”, p.21, Aeterna Press

• Emotions of any kind can be evoked by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.

  Aristotle

  Inspiration, Character, Emotion

• Emotions of any kind are produced by melody and rhythm; therefore by music a man becomes accustomed to feeling the right emotions; music has thus the power to form character, and the various kinds of music based on various modes may be distinguished by their effects on character.

  Aristotle

  Character, Men, Feelings

• Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean. Indeed the very names of some directly imply evil, for instance malice, shamelessness, envy, and, of actions, adultery, theft, murder. All these and similar actions and feelings are blamed as being bad in themselves; it is not the excess or deficiency of them that we blame. It is impossible therefore ever to go right in regard to them - one must always be wrong.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Names, Evil

• A state of the soul is either (1) an emotion, (2) a capacity, or (3) a disposition; virtue therefore must be one of these three things.

  Aristotle

  Soul, Three, Emotion

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.38, Wordsworth Editions

• If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.

  Aristotle

  Art, Mean, Intellectual

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.40, Wordsworth Editions

• Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of the mind that determines our choice of actions and emotions and consists essentially in observing the mean relative to us ... a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Two, Choices

• There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions--that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.

  Aristotle

  Character, Mean, Men

  Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (2012). “The Modern Library Collection of Greek and Roman Philosophy 3-Book Bundle: Meditations; Selected Dialogues of Plato; The Basic Works of Aristotle”, p.3615, Modern Library

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