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lie, to perjure, to transgress covenants and pledges.
[6]
Unrighteousness is accompanied by slander, imposture, pretence of kindness, malignity, unscrupulousness.
[7]
Of meanness there are three kinds, love of base gain, parsimony, niggardliness.
[8]
Love of base gain makes men seek profit from all sources and pay more regard to the profit than to the disgrace;
[9]
parsimony makes them unwilling to spend money on a necessary object;
[10]
niggardliness causes them only to spend in driblets and in a bad way, and to lose more than they gain by not at the proper moment letting go the difference.
[11]
It belongs to meanness to set a very high value on money and to think nothing that brings profit a disgrace—a menial and servile and squalid mode of life, alien to ambition and to liberality.
[12]
Meanness is accompanied by pettiness, sulkiness, self-abasement, lack of proportion, ignobleness, misanthropy.
[13]
It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annoyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness.
[14]
Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism, self-abasement.8.
In general it belongs to goodness to make the spirit's disposition virtuous, experiencing tranquil and ordered emotions and in harmony throughout all its parts; this is the cause of the opinion that the disposition of a good spirit is a pattern of a good constitution of the state.
[2]
It also belongs to goodness to do good to the deserving and love the good and hate the wicked, and not to be eager to inflict punishment or take vengeance, but gracious and kindly and forgiving.
[3]
Goodness is accompanied by honesty, reasonableness, kindness, hopefulness, and also by such traits as love of home and of friends and comrades and guests, and of one's fellow-men, and love of what is noble—all of which qualities are among those that are praised.
[4]
To badness belong the opposite qualities.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 20, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1952.
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