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.

— Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) Greek Philosopher

* Source: Will Durant, _The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers_ (1926) [Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6] Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VII: Ethics and the Nature of Happiness:
   
    “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; ‘these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions’; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: ‘the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life… for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy‘” (p. 76).
   
    The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7. The misattribution is from taking Durant’s summation of Aristotle’s ideas as being the words of Aristotle himself.
   
— Wikiquote

Excellence is a process, not a state, nor an event.

An event is a change of state. A process is an infinite chain of events.

— Me@2011.01.01

— Me@2012.02.04

2012.02.04 Saturday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK