Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God‘s business.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions.

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody‘s power and is not easy.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it.

Moral excellence is an ornament for personal beauty; righteous conduct, for high birth; success for learning; and proper spending for wealth.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

We cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for.

Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Moral excellence is the bright consummate flower of all progress.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.