The business of every art is to bring something into existence, and the practice of an art involves the study of how to bring into existence something which is capable of having such an existence and has its efficient cause in the maker and not in itself.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.

A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life; but he can only attain happiness under the opposite conditions

With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.

If we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.

A man who examines each subject from a philosophical standpoint cannot neglect them: he has to omit nothing, and state the truth about each topic.