“Excellence is a habit”

Widely misattributed to Aristotle, the following quotation was, in fact, part of a precis of the thinking of that philosopher written in 1926 by Will Durant.

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

—Will Durant, paraphrasing Aristotle

As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.

—Aristotle himself