The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle

Those, for instance, who are called by such names as niggardly, stingy, miserly, all fall short in giving, but do not covet other people’s goods, or wish to take them.

But to seek death as a refuge from poverty, or love, or any painful thing, is not the act of a brave man, but of a coward. For it is effeminacy thus to fly from vexation; and in such a case death is accepted not because it is noble, but simply as an escape from evil.

For it is repeated acts of a particular kind that give a man a particular character.

by doing just acts we become just, and by doing acts of temperance and courage we become temperate and courageous.

No one would call a man just who did not take pleasure in doing justice, nor generous who took no pleasure in acts of generosity, and so on.

as at the Olympic games it is not the fairest and strongest who receive the crown, but those who contend (for among these are the victors), so in life, too, the winners are those who not only have all the excellences, but manifest these in deed.

For the good man, who takes what is noble as his guide, will listen to reason, but he who is not good, whose desires are set on pleasure, must be corrected by pain like a beast of burden. And for this reason, also, they say the pains to be applied must be those that are most contrary to the pleasures which the culprit loves.

For the generality of men are more readily swayed by compulsion than by reason, and by fear of punishment than by desire for what is noble.

Happiness, then, extends just so far as contemplation, and the more contemplation the more happiness is there in a life—not accidentally, but as a necessary accompaniment of the contemplation; for contemplation is precious in itself.

For life is an exercise of faculties, and each man exercises the faculties he most loves upon the things he most loves; e.g. the musical man exercises his hearing upon melodies,