Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
AristotleRead
What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We have the ability to take action or to refrain from action, and this freedom is within our control.
This quote by Aristotle emphasizes the idea of free will and personal responsibility. It suggests that individuals possess the power to choose not just what they will do, but also what they will refrain from doing. This highlights the importance of conscious decision-making in our lives and acknowledges that our power lies in both our actions and our inactions.
Themes
PowerChoiceActionInactionResponsibility
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about decision-making.
More from Aristotle
All quotes βThose who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.
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For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
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You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
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But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
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The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
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Similar quotes
He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
Baruch SpinozaRead
My proposal is not that we understand what the word βgodβ means and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy, vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a Roman cross-and that we take our courage in both hands and allow our meaning for the word βgodβ to be recentered around that point.
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Do you think it is only a little thing to possess a house from which lovely things can be seen?
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All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.
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I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger. 'No, and if he were I would burn my library.
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There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.
William Henry HarrisonRead