As Our Acts Vary, Our Habits Will

All Men Desire By Nature To Know.

But The Virtues We Get By First Exercising Them, As Also Happens In The Case Of The Arts As Well. For The Things We Have To Learn Before We Can Do Them, We Learn By Doing Them, E.g. Men Become Builders By Building And Lyre Players By Playing The Lyre; So Too We Become Just By Doing Just Acts, Temperate By Doing Temperate Acts, Brave By Doing Brave Acts.

Most Persons Think That A State In Order To Be Happy Ought To Be Large; But Even If They Are Right, They Have No Idea Of What Is A Large And What A Small State.... To The Size Of States There Is A Limit, As There Is To Other Things, Plants, Animals, Implements; For None Of These Retain Their Natural Power When They Are Too Large Or Too Small, But They Either Wholly Lose Their Nature, Or Are Spoiled.

Of Ill-temper There Are Three Kinds: Irascibility, Bitterness, Sullenness. It Belongs To The Ill-tempered Man To Be Unable To Bear Either Small Slights Or Defeats But To Be Given To Retaliation And Revenge, And Easily Moved To Anger By Any Chance Deed Or Word. Ill-temper Is Accompanied By Excitability Of Character, Instability, Bitter Speech, And Liability To Take Offence At Trifles And To Feel These Feelings Quickly And On Slight Occasions.

It Is No Easy Task To Be Good.