The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.

Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.

It is no easy task to be good.

The man with a host of friends who slaps on the back everybody he meets is regarded as the friend of nobody.

Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.

...happiness is an activity and a complete utilization of virtue, not conditionally but absolutely.

In educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain