Aristotle Quotes About Nicomachean Ethics
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He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.
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It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.
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Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself.
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It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits
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The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.
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If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.
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For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.
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Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
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It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
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We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.
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The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.
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It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.
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He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
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Men are good in but one way, but bad in many.
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The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
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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.
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We make war that we may live in peace.
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The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
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With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.
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Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.
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For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.
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Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.
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Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.
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For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.
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In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.
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Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes.
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The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23
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The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
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Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
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For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
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