Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
...happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement....
Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.
To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.
Wit is educated insolence.
The secret to humor is surprise.
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
I have gained this by philosophy … I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.
All men by nature desire knowledge.
Philosophy can make people sick.
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit
With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.
Any polis which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness. Otherwise, political association sinks into a mere alliance.
The gods too are fond of a joke.
The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.