By the mean of the thing I denote a point equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody.
the Nicomachean Ethicsby aristotle
It is therefore not of small moment whether we are trained from adulthood in one set of habits or another; on the contrary it is of very great, or rather supreme importance.
Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.
Hence intellectual perception is both a beginning and an end, for the demonstrations arise from these, and concern them. As a result, one ought to pay attention to the undemonstrated assertions and opinions of experienced and older people, or of the prudent, no less than to demonstrations, for, because the have an experienced eye, they see correctly.
If it is better to be happy as a result of one’s own exertions than by the gift of fortune, it is reasonable to suppose that this is how happiness is won.
Happiness is a kind of activity of the soul; whereas the remaining good things are either merely indispensable conditions of happiness, or are of the nature of auxiliary means, and useful instrumentally.
Insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue. We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Where there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them.
As far as the name goes, we may almost say that the great majority of mankind are agreed about this; for both the multitude and the persons of refinement speak of it as happiness, and conceive ‘the good life’ or ‘doing well’ to be the same thing as ‘being happy’.
