Nicomachean Ethics
Every action (craft, investigation, decision) seems to aim at some good.
There is some end of the things we pursue inour actions which we wish for because of itslef.
The unconditionally good judge is the person educated in very area
Most people identify the good with happiness, and the many think the nature of happiness is something obvious like pleasure, wealth or honour.
The origin is what is known to us
The cultivated people conceive the good as honour.
In the view of active people at least virtue is superior to honour.
As sight is to body, so understanding is to soul.
Happiness seems unconditionally complete
The human good turns out to be the soul's activity that expresses virtue.
Each type of person finds pleasure in whatever he is called a lover of.
It is the activities expressing virtue that control happiness
Virtue of character results form habit
The purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good.
The right sort of habituation must avoid excess and deficiency
Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency but preserved my the mean.
To make us find enjoyment or pain in the right; for this is the correct education.
There are three objects of choice – fine, expedient and pleasant – and three objects of avoidance their contraries, shameful, harmful and painful.
Virtue, then, is a state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency.
It is hard work to be excellent, we have to be doing it to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right end, and in the right way.
We must examine what we ourselves drift into easily. We must drag ourselves off in the contrary direction,
The continent person acts on decision, not on appetite.
Magnificence is expenditure that is fitting in its large scale.
The magnanimous person is worthy of the greatest things, he is the beat person.
Honour is the prize of virtue, and is awarded to good people.
An attempt to be impressive among inferiors is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak.
Willingness to accept insults is slavish.
What we call just is whatever produces and maintains happiness and its parts for a political community.
Justice is complete virtue to the highest degree because it is the complete excercise of complete virtue.
Anger is a response to apparent injustice.
There are three capacities of the soul – perception, understanding, desire - that control action and truth.
Intelligence is a state grasping the truth, invloving reason, concerned with action about what is good or bad for a human being.
Scientific knowledge is supposition about universals, things that are by necessity.
Wisdom is understanding plus scientific knowledge.
Considerateness is the correct consideration that judges what is decent.
Wisdom produces happiness in the way that health produces health.
Cleverness is to be able to do the actions that tend to promote whatever goal is assumed and to achieve it.
There are three conditions of character to be avoided – vice, incontinence and bestiality.
Socrates held that our actions conflict with what is best only because we are ignorant.
The person who is prone to be overcome by pleasures is incontinent.
Friendship is reciprocated goodwill.
The cause of every friendship is good or pleasure and every friendship reflecs some similarity.
The flatterer is a friend in an inferior position, and pretends to love more than he is loved.
A slave is a tool with a soul, while a tool is a slave without a soul.
A parent loves his children as they love themselves.
Concord is political friendship
Happiness is found in the activities expressing virtue.