Quotes from Poetics

15 notable lines from Aristotle · c. 335 BCE

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

Definition of tragedy, Part VI · trans. Butcher

Quotations follow the Anthony Kenny translation (Oxford University Press, 2013) — our recommended edition.

  1. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

    Part VII · trans. Butcher

  2. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.

    Part IX · trans. Butcher

  3. Poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history; for while poetry is concerned with universal truths, history treats of particular facts.

    Aristotle

  4. The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place.

    Part VI · trans. Butcher

  5. A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

    Aristotle

  6. The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.

    Part XXIV · trans. Butcher

  7. A man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.

    The ideal tragic hero, Part XIII · trans. Butcher

  8. The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons.

    Part IV · trans. Butcher

  9. It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen—what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity.

    Part IX · trans. Butcher

  10. Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality.

    Part VI · trans. Butcher

  11. Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity.

    Peripeteia, Part XI · trans. Butcher

  12. Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.

    Anagnorisis, Part XI · trans. Butcher

  13. It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.

    Part XXIV · trans. Butcher

  14. I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each.

    Opening line, Part I · trans. Butcher