Quotes About Virtue

Por la misma razón la justicia parece ser, entre todas las demás virtudes, la única que constituye un bien extraño, un bien para los demás y no para sí, porque se ejerce respecto a los demás, y no hace más que lo que es útil a los demás, que son o los magistrados o el pueblo entero.

For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education.

One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself.

I having stated in a former part of this treatise that men should choose the mean instead of either the excess or defect, and that the mean is according to the dictates of Right Reason;

El que se deja llevar de la cólera en ocasiones dadas contra los que lo merezcan, haciéndolo además de la manera, en el momento, y durante todo el tiempo que convenga, debe merecer nuestra aprobación. Esta es, sépase bien, la verdadera mansedumbre, si la mansedumbre es digna de elogios.

On the other hand, because fortune is needed as an addition, some hold good fortune to be identical with Happiness: which it is not, for even this in excess is a hindrance, and perhaps then has no right to be called good fortune since it is good only in so far as it contributes to Happiness.

In the next place, Experience and Skill in the various particulars is thought to be a species of Courage: whence Socrates also thought that Courage was knowledge.

Men may be bad in many ways, But good in one alone.

But of Reason this too does evidently partake, as we have said: for instance, in the man of self-control it obeys Reason: and perhaps in the man of perfected self-mastery, or the brave man, it is yet more obedient; in them it agrees entirely with the Reason.

From whence it is evident, that those who seek for what is just, seek for a mean; now law is a mean.

But Justice, it must be observed, is a mean state not after the same manner as the forementioned virtues, but because it aims at producing the mean, while Injustice occupies both the extremes.

By choiceworthy in themselves are meant those from which nothing is sought beyond the act of Working: and of this kind are thought to be the actions according to Virtue, because doing what is noble and excellent is one of those things which are choiceworthy for their own sake alone.

Again he urged that that is most choiceworthy which we choose, not by reason of, or with a view to, anything further; and that Pleasure is confessedly of this kind because no one ever goes on to ask to what purpose he is pleased, feeling that Pleasure is in itself choiceworthy. Again, that when added to any other good it makes it more choiceworthy; as, for instance, to actions of justice, or perfected self-mastery; and good can only be increased by itself.

IX Now that Moral Virtue is a mean state, and how it is so, and that it lies between two faulty states, one in the way of excess and another in the way of defect, and that it is so because it has an aptitude to aim at the mean both in feelings and actions, all this has been set forth fully and sufficiently.

For to people of that sort, just as to those lacking self-restraint,15 knowledge is without benefit. But to those who fashion their longings in accord with reason and act accordingly, knowing about these things would be of great profit.

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they do need friendship in addition; and in the realm of the just things, the most just seems to be what involves friendship.

For [people] are good18 in one way, but in all kinds of ways bad

baseness that does not possess its own starting point [or principle] is always less harmful than that which does possess it, and intellect is such a starting point. It

Virtue, then, is twofold, intellectual and moral. Both the coming-into-[1103a] being and increase of intellectual virtue result mostly from teaching—hence it requires experience and time—whereas moral virtue is the result of habit, and so it is that moral virtue got its name [?thik?] by a slight alteration of the term habit [ethos].

Neither by nature, therefore, nor contrary to nature are the virtues present; they are instead present in us who are of such a nature as to receive them, and who are completed1 through habit.

Happiness above all seems to be of this character, for we always choose it on account of itself and never on account of something else. Yet honor, pleasure, intellect, and every virtue we choose on their own account—for even if nothing resulted from them, we would choose each of them—but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, because we suppose that, through them, we will be happy.

Good men were not to be made merely by laws which relied for their sanction on force but only by religion and morality, which appealed to the conscience. Only when the people, he wrote, had emptied them-selves of all the lust of selfish will—and without religion it was impossible they should—could absolute power be safely entrusted to the State.

She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.

His knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior to his character.