The beginning, as the proverb says, is half the whole.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids.

Friendship is a thing most necessary to life, since without friends no one would choose to live, though possessed of all other advantages.

So, if we must give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first actuality [entelechy] of anatural organized body.

Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

[this element], the seat of the appetites and of desire in general, does in a sense participate in principle, as being amenable and obedient to it

Now, the causes being four, it is the business of the student of nature to know about them all, and if he refers his problems back to all of them, he will assign the "why" in the way proper to his science-the matter, the form, the mover, that for the sake of which.