Quotes About Virtue By Aristotle

#1. Happiness is an activity and a complete utilization of virtue, not conditionally but absolutely.

Aristotle.

#2. Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.

Aristotle.

#3. The life of active virtue is essentially pleasant.

Aristotle.

#4. In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.

Aristotle.

#5. The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.

Aristotle.

#6. Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

Aristotle.

#7. The life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.

Aristotle.

#8. Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

Aristotle.

#9. 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.

Aristotle.

#10. To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.

Aristotle.

#11. We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.

Aristotle.

#12. Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.

Aristotle.

#13. Aristotle states that only one thing could justify monarchy, and that was if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together. Tactfully,

Aristotle.

#14. Virtue makes us aim at the right end, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.

Aristotle.

#15. Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating.

Aristotle.

#16. Man's work as Man is accomplished by virtue of Practical Wisdom and Moral Virtue, the latter giving the right aim and direction, the former the right means to its attainment;

Aristotle.

#17. For 'activity in conformity with virtue' involves virtue.

Aristotle.

#18. Hence while in respect of its substance and the definition that states what it really is in essence virtue is the observance of the mean, in point of excellence and rightness it is an extreme.

Aristotle.

#19. These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions ... The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.

Aristotle.

#20. The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Aristotle.

#21. Our first presupposition must be that in nature nothing acts on, or is acted on by, any other thing at random, nor may anything come from anything else, unless we mean that it does so in virtue of a concomitant attribute.

Aristotle.

#22. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle.

#23. I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.

Tim O'Reilly

#24. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle.

#25. Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue;

Aristotle.

#26. 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.

Aristotle.

#27. Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.

Aristotle.

#28. True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.

Aristotle.

#29. He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.

Aristotle.

#30. [I]n speaking about someone's character, we do not say that he is wise or comprehending, but that he is gentle or moderate.

Aristotle.

#31. Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.

Aristotle.

#32. It [Justice] is complete virtue in the fullest sense, because it is the active exercise of complete virtue; and it is complete because its possessor can exercise it in relation to another person, and not only by himself.

Aristotle.

#33. For Aristotle, it's not enough simply to act in accordance with the reason once in a while. We must cultivate habits of virtue that develop into a firmly established moral character over a lifetime.

John Mark Reynolds

#34. Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.

Aristotle.

#35. Happiness comes from theperfect practice of virtue.

Aristotle.

#36. The good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.

Aristotle.

#37. Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue

Aristotle.

#38. 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.

Aristotle.

#39. Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of the mind that determines our choice of actions and emotions and consists essentially in observing the mean relative to us ... a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

Aristotle.

#40. To feel these feelings at the right time, on the right occasion, towards the right people, for the right purpose and in the right manner, is to feel the best amount of them, which is the mean amount - and the best amount is of course the mark of virtue.

Aristotle.

#41. It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite.

Aristotle.

#42. A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it.

Aristotle.

#43. Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Aristotle.

#44. The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

Aristotle.

#45. 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.

Aristotle.

#46. There are three qualifications required in those who have to fill the highest offices, - (1) first of all, loyalty to the established constitution; (2) the greatest administrative capacity; (3) virtue and justice of the kind proper to each form of government.

Aristotle.

#47. The actions from which [virtue] was produced are also those in which it is exercised.

Aristotle.

#48. Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever ... Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.

Aristotle.

#49. A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave ... The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities - a natural defectiveness.

Aristotle.

#50. It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

Aristotle.

#51. In justice is all virtues found in sum.

Aristotle.

#52. Let us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.

Aristotle.

#53. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property were just what Aristotle did not talk about. They are the conditions of happiness; but the essence of happiness, according to Aristotle, is virtue. So the moderns decided to deal with the conditions and to let happiness take care of itself.

Allan Bloom

#54. Modesty is hardly to be described as a virtue. It is a feeling rather than a disposition. It is a kind of fear of falling into disrepute.

Aristotle.