Metaphysics Quotes
"For the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience."
"Experience seems pretty much like science and art, but really science and art come to men through experience."
"The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience."
"The wise man knows all things, as far as possible, although he has not knowledge of each of them in detail."
"The truth is in one way hard, in another easy."
"For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all."
"The minute accuracy of mathematics is not to be demanded in all cases, but only in the case of things which have no matter."
"No one would try to do anything if he were not going to come to a limit."
"For even if they consider how things are, practical men do not study the eternal, but what is relative and in the present."
"The inquiry that is both the hardest of all and the most necessary for knowledge of the truth is whether being and unity are the substances of things."
"If there is to be a being-itself and a unity-itself, there is much difficulty in seeing how there will be anything else besides these."
"If unity is not a substance, evidently number also will not exist as an entity separate from the individual things."
"For the corporeal has being in every dimension, while the other objects of mathematics added in one way will increase what they are added to, but in another way will not do so."
"A question connected with these is whether numbers and bodies and planes and points are substances of a kind, or not."
"If substance, not having existed before, now exists, or having existed before, afterwards does not exist, this change is thought to be accompanied by a process of becoming or perishing."
"The nature of a thing is a beginning, and so is the element of a thing, and thought and will, and essence, and the final cause."
"The essence of what is one is to be some kind of beginning of number."
"Every object of understanding or reason the understanding either affirms or denies-this is obvious from the definition."
"It is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything."
"Potency in one sense means that which can begin a movement in another thing or in itself qua other."
"Some things are called adunata in virtue of this kind of incapacity."
"Quantum means that which is divisible into two or more constituent parts."
"Quality means the differentia of the essence."
"Things are ‘relative’ as double to half, and treble to a third."
"What is called ‘complete’ is that outside which it is not possible to find any of its parts."
"‘That in virtue of which’ has several meanings."
"‘Disposition’ means the arrangement of that which has parts."
"‘Having’ means a kind of activity of the haver and of what he has."
"‘Affection’ means a quality in respect of which a thing can be altered."
"We speak of ‘privation’ if something has not one of the attributes which a thing might naturally have."
"‘To come from something’ means to come from something as from matter."
"‘Part’ means that into which a quantum can in any way be divided."
"‘A whole’ means that from which is absent none of the parts."
"It is not any chance quantitative thing that can be said to be ‘mutilated’."
"The term ‘race’ or ‘genus’ is used if generation of things which have the same form is continuous."
"‘The false’ means that which is false as a thing."
"‘Accident’ means that which attaches to something and can be truly asserted."
"That there are principles and causes which are generable and destructible without ever being in course of being generated or destroyed, is obvious."
"The question might be raised, why some things are produced spontaneously as well as by art."
"Another question is naturally raised, viz. what sort of parts belong to the form and what sort not to the form, but to the concrete thing."
"What the essence is and in what sense it is independent, has been stated universally in a way which is true of every case."
"But all the attributes in the definition must be one; for the definition is a single formula and a formula of substance."
"For substance means a ‘one’ and a ‘this’, as we maintain."
"If then the genus absolutely does not exist apart from the species-of-a-genus, clearly the definition is the formula which comprises the differentiae."
"Every potency is at one and the same time a potency of the opposite."
"For everything that is produced is something produced from something and by something."
"That which is capable of being may either be or not be; the same thing, then, is capable both of being and of not being."
"Therefore, on the one hand, genera are not certain entities and substances separable from other things."
"Actuality, then, is the existence of a thing not in the way which we express by ‘potentially’."
"For the act of building is realized in the thing that is being built, and comes to be, and is, at the same time as the house."
"And the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potency is acquired."
"But surely that which is greatest in each class is complete."
"For that is greatest which cannot be exceeded, and that is complete beyond which nothing can be found."
"For the complete difference marks the end of a series."
"And beyond the end there is nothing; for in everything it is the extreme and includes all else."
"Therefore there is nothing beyond the end, and the complete needs nothing further."
"From this, then, it is clear that contrariety is complete difference."
"And as contraries are so called in several senses, their modes of completeness will answer to the various modes of contrariety which attach to the contraries."
"It is clear that one thing cannot have more than one contrary."
"For neither can there be anything more extreme than the extreme, nor can there be more than two extremes for the one interval."
"The primary contrariety is that between positive state and privation."
"The final cause, then, produces motion as being loved, but all other things move by being moved."
"Now if something is moved it is capable of being otherwise than as it is."
"The first mover, then, exists of necessity; and in so far as it exists by necessity, its mode of being is good, and it is in this sense a first principle."
"On such a principle, then, depend the heavens and the world of nature."
"And thought thinks on itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought."
"God’s self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal."
"There is a substance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things."
"It is clear, then, why these things are as they are."
"For the necessary has all these senses-that which is necessary perforce because it is contrary to the natural impulse."
"Knowledge and perception and opinion and understanding have always something else as their object."