In the human species at all events there is a great diversity of pleasures. The same things delight some men and annoy others, and things painful and disgusting to some are pleasant and attractive to others.
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
No one would choose a life without friends, even if they had everything else in the world.
For that which has become habitual, becomes as it were natural.
The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.
Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body.
Selfishness doesn't consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.
Nor need it cause surprise that things disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.
Meanness is incurable; it cannot be cured by old age, or by anything else.
Now the soul of man is divided into two parts, one of which has a rational principle in itself, and the other, not having a rational principle in itself, is able to obey such a principle. And we call a man in any way good because he has the virtues of these two parts.
