'Happiness, then, is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world.' In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle's guiding question is: what is the best thing for a human being? …
'We are looking for the things that enable us to live a noble and happy life...and what prospects decent people will have of acquiring any of them.' The Eudemian Ethics is a major …
'I am not a man, I am dynamite.' Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical …
`Reason, seriousness, mastery over the emotions, the whole murky affair which goes by the name of thought, all the privileges and showpieces of man: what a high price has been paid …
'You ask what is the proper measure of wealth? The best measure is to have what is necessary, and next best, to have enough. Keep well!' The letters written by the Stoic …
On Obligations (De officiis) was written by Cicero in late 44 BC after the assassination of Julius Caesar to provide principles of behaviour for aspiring politicians. It explores …
The struggle which Plato has Socrates recommend to his interlocutors in Gorgias - and to his readers - is the struggle to overcome the temptations of worldly success and to …
'Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live ... while you have life in you, while you still can, make yourself good.' The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) is a …
Republic is the central work of the Western world's most famous philosopher. Essentially an inquiry into morality, Republic also contains crucial arguments and insights into many …
'many men compete in digging and kicking but no one at all in the pursuit of human excellence.' Diogenes the Cynic is best remembered today for having lived in a storage-jar, and …
