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Full Idea
The pleasure or pain that accompanies people's acts should be taken as a sign of their dispositions.
Gist of Idea
Character is revealed by the pleasures and pains people feel
Source
Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1104b04)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Ethics (Nicomachean)', ed/tr. ThomsonJ A K/TredennickH [Penguin 1976], p.95
A Reaction
Nice. Nothing reveals a person quicker than their apparently finding rather strange sources for pleasure or dislike. A nice short cut for novelists wanting to reveal character.
Related Idea
Idea 4394 People develop their characters through the activities they pursue [Aristotle]
| 134 | Good and bad people seem to experience equal amounts of pleasure and pain [Plato] |
| 361 | It is a mistake to think that the most violent pleasure or pain is therefore the truest reality [Plato] |
| 386 | Intense pleasure and pain are not felt in a good body, but in a worthless one [Plato] |
| 328 | Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant [Plato] |
| 49 | Character is revealed by the pleasures and pains people feel [Aristotle] |
| 53 | Feeling inappropriate pleasure or pain affects conduct, and is central to morality [Aristotle] |
| 3563 | Pleasure and virtue entail one another [Epicurus] |
| 506 | Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not an adult [Democritus (attr)] |
| 5705 | Nature only wants two things: freedom from pain, and pleasure [Lucretius] |
| 13301 | We are scared of death - except when we are immersed in pleasure! [Seneca] |
| 1478 | Animals don't value pleasure, as they cease sexual intercourse after impregnation [Plutarch] |
| 3777 | Pleasure and pain control all human desires and duties [Bentham] |
| 24166 | Pleasure serves to maintain our relationship with its source [Cochrane] |