Nicomachean Ethics: We Become What We Do

In the second book, Aristotle turns from happiness to virtue: the good qualities of character that a happy life needs.His question is practical: where do these qualities come from?

“There are two kinds of excellence: excellence of the mind and excellence of character.Excellence of the mind grows mostly through teaching, and so it needs experience and time.Excellence of character comes from habit; in fact, the Greek word for it comes from the word for habit.So none of the virtues is in us by nature.A stone naturally falls down, and you could not teach it to rise, not even by throwing it up ten thousand times.

Nature gives us the ability to receive the virtues, and habit makes them complete.We do not get our eyes by seeing often; we had them first and then used them.But with the virtues it is the other way round: we get them by first doing them, as with the arts.People become builders by building and harp players by playing the harp.In the same way, we become just by doing just acts, self-controlled by doing self-controlled acts, and brave by doing brave acts.

The same activity can also ruin us: good builders come from building well, and bad builders from building badly.If this were not so, nobody would need a teacher.In a word, our characters are formed by our repeated actions.So it makes no small difference what habits we form from childhood; it makes a very great difference, or rather, all the difference.”