"For it is not true, as some..." - Quote by Aristotle
For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in making credible.
More by Aristotle
“With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”
“To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.”
“The sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.”
More on Persuasion
“Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.”
“Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.”
“The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them.”
More on Character
“She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.”
“Cultivated people foster what is good in others,not what is bad.Petty people do the opposite.”
“No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.”