“We acquire a particular quality by acting in a particular way.”

“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.”

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”

“The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.”

“There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.”