Quotes from book
Nicomachean Ethics

Name: Nicomachean Ethics
Author: Aristotle

Aristotle

“For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1103b.4
Nicomachean Ethics

“For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant…. Now for most men their pleasures are in conflict with one another because these are not by nature pleasant, but the lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; and virtuous actions are such… Happiness then is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world, and these attributes are not severed as in the inscription at Delos: Most noble is that which is justest, and best is health; but pleasantest is it to win what we love.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book I, 1099a.6
Nicomachean Ethics

“It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1105b.9
Nicomachean Ethics

“…. In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1103b
Nicomachean Ethics

“The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book IX, 1168b.1
Variants: My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
Nicomachean Ethics

“Change in all things is sweet.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book VII, 14
Remark: While this quote is known as Aristotle's, he did not propose it as his own saying, but as a citation from another author. The full text is: "But 'change in all things is sweet', as the poet says, because of some vice."
Nicomachean Ethics

“May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly, because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing the good things we have specified to be supremely blessed, though on the human scale of bliss.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book I, 1101a.10
Nicomachean Ethics

“If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book I, 1094a.18
Nicomachean Ethics

“We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1109a.34 (cf. Nicomachean Ethics, 1131b: ἔστι γὰρ τὸ ἔλαττον κακὸν μᾶλλον αἱρετὸν τοῦ μείζονος [the lesser of two evils is more desirable than the greater])
Nicomachean Ethics

“Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book I, 1099b.22: Quoted in Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:8.
Nicomachean Ethics
Context: Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.