when we practice a virtue over and over and over, we become fluent in the virtue, and our responses emerge from a deep reservoir of understanding about the virtue, so instead of remaining stuck in a rut defined by our previous behaviors, we have a fighting chance to make a good decision regardless of how weird the situation might be.

If we really work at finding the means of our virtues—learning their ins and outs, their vicissitudes and pitfalls, their pros and cons—we become flexible, inquisitive, adaptable, and better people.

We can all probably identify some starter kit we had as kids. From a very early age I was an extreme rule follower—or maybe let’s say I was “inclined toward the virtue of dutifulness,” so I don’t sound like such a suck-up.

The more we try to learn and understand the lives being led by other people—the more we search for a golden mean of empathy—the less we will find it permissible to treat them with cruelty.

if we don’t practice mildness, learn how to fine-tune it, and regularly check in with ourselves about whether what we are doing is appropriately mild, we might someday end up drooling while other kids get bullied or punching our friends in the face.

habituation, the practice of working at our virtues, is really the whole shebang here. And the great thing about Aristotle’s sales pitch is that he says habituation can work for any virtue—even ones we seemingly weren’t born with aptitudes for, ones where our starter kits are old, rusted toolboxes that are missing all their screwdrivers.

flourishing, to me, is a sort of “runner’s high” for the totality of our existence—it’s a sense of completeness that flows through us when we are nailing every aspect of being human. So in Aristotle’s view, the very purpose of living is to flourish—just like the purpose of a flute is to produce beautiful music, and the purpose of a knife is to cut

there is a way to escape the scourge of cruelty: knowledge. (Specifically: knowledge of cultural practices other than our own.)

flourishing, you see, doesn’t just require us to identify and then acquire all of these virtues—it requires that we have every one in the exact right amount.