The Internet Classics Archive (MIT)
Rhetoric
Aristotle
350 BCEAristotle's founding treatise on persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos, the three kinds of oratory, the emotions, style, and arrangement, in W. Rhys Roberts's translation.
The Internet Classics Archive (MIT) Public domain in the United States (W. Rhys Roberts translation, 1924) Cover source Local typographic cover created for The Missing Workbook from public-domain source metadata
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As for Men in their Prime, clearly we shall find that they have a character between that of the young and that of the old, free from the extremes of either. They have neither that excess of confidence which amounts to rashness, nor too much timidity, but the right amount of each. They neither trust everybody nor distrust everybody, but judge people correctly. Their lives will be guided not by the sole consideration either of what is noble or of what is useful, but by both; neither by parsimony nor by prodigality, but by what is fit and proper. So, too, in regard to anger and desire; they will be brave as well as temperate, and temperate as well as brave; these virtues are divided between the young and the old; the young are brave but intemperate, the old temperate but cowardly. To put it generally, all the valuable qualities that youth and age divide between them are united in the prime of life, while all their excesses or defects are replaced by moderation and fitness. The body is in its prime from thirty to five-and-thirty; the mind about forty-nine.