“In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.” -Aristotle
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well. -Aristotle
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
