On friendship

“CONSEQUENTLY youths, who find much pleasure in conversation and readily agree with others, quickly make friends. This does not happen with old people, for they cannot become friends of those whose company and conversation they do not enjoy. The same reason holds for morose persons who are quarrelsome and critical of what others do. But such people, i.e., the elderly and the severe, can be benevolent inasmuch as they affectively wish good to others and even effectively assist them in their needs. However, they do not really become friends because they do not live with nor take pleasure in the company of their friends—activities that seem to be the special works of friendship.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, Lect. VI

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"There is no place for leisure in political activities"

"IT is obvious that there is no place for leisure in political activities. But a man wants something besides mere participation in politics, like positions of power and honor; and-since these objectives do not constitute the ultimate end, as was pointed out in the first book (60-72) it is rather fitting that by means of politics a person should wish to obtain happiness for himself and everyone else; happiness of this kind sought in political life is distinct from political life itself, and in fact we do seek it as something distinct. This is contemplative happiness to which the whole of political life seems directed; as long as the arrangement of political life establishes and preserves peace giving men the opportunity of contemplating truth."

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 10, Lect. 11.

■ Online translation of the Commentary at DHS Priory.

■ Also, see this excellent translation from Dumb Ox Books at Amazon

Happiness and changes of fortune

“IF on the contrary the evils should be frequent and great, they will cause the happy man external annoyance and internal affliction, because internally they bring about sadness and externally they hinder good works. However they do not eliminate virtuous action entirely, because virtue makes good use even of misfortunes themselves. In this way the good of virtue shines forth insofar as a man gracefully endures frequent and great misfortunes, not because he may not feel the sorrow or sadness as the Stoics held but, being courageous and magnanimous, his reason does not succumb to such afflictions.

“This, in fact, was the difference between the Stoics and the Peripatetics, whose leader was Aristotle. The Stoics held that sorrow in no way afflicts a virtuous man, because, in their view, corporeal or external things are not in any sense a good of man. The Peripatetics, on the contrary, said that a virtuous man is affected by sadness, yet this does not overwhelm reason but is moderated by it. In their opinion corporeal and external things do not constitute the greatest but the least good of man and this in the degree that they help him.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I, Lect. XVI.

■ At Amazon

■ At St. Augustine's Press