For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.
People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.
The honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
One citizen differs from another, but the salvation of the community is the common business of them all. This community is the constitution; the virtue of the citizen must therefore be relative to the constitution of which he is a member.
If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.
The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.
for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use
The happy man . . . will be always or at least most often employed in doing and contemplating the things that are in conformity with virtue. And he will bear changes of fortunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way.
All good qualities are summarized by acting fairly.
Among all good qualities, generosity is the most loved.
