The life of theoretical philosophy is the best and happiest a man can lead. Few men are capable of it and then only intermittently. For the rest there is a second-best way of life, that of moral virtue and practical wisdom.
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A scientist conducts research to understand the natural world, making discoveries that often lead to technological, medical, or environmental advancements.
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Prudence as well as Moral Virtue determines the complete performance of a man's proper function: Virtue ensures the rightness of the end we aim at, Prudence ensures the rightness of the means we adopt to gain that end.
[the virtues] cannot exist without Prudence. A proof of this is that everyone, even at the present day, in defining Virtue, after saying what disposition it is [i.e. moral virtue] and specifying the things with which it is concerned, adds that it is a disposition determined by the right principle; and the right principle is the principle determined by Prudence.
It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness to others.
Excellence, then, is about making choices, finding a middle ground, which is determined by reason, as a wise person would decide.
The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.
The government of freemen is nobler and implies more virtue than despotic government. Neither is a city to be deemed happy or a legislator to be praised because he trains his citizens to conquer and obtain dominion over their neighbors, for there is great evil in this.
... the friendship of worthless people has a bad effect (because they take part, unstable as they are, in worthless pursuits, and actually become bad through each other's influence). But the friendship of the good is good, and increases in goodness because of their association. They seem even to become better men by exercising their friendship and improving each other; for the traits that they admire in each other get transferred to themselves.
Jealousy is a feeling reasonable people have to get good things for themselves, but envy is a bad feeling where someone doesn't want their neighbor to have good things.
Moral qualities, then, are not given to us by nature or against nature. Nature does prepare us to receive them, but they are fully formed by habit.