Comfortable Virtues, Easy reading A snippet

Aquinas defined ‘virtue’ as a habit “by which we live righteously, of which no one can make bad use, which God works in us, without us."

A virtue is a good habit.

But what I find reassuring about Aquinas's definition is the little phrase - of which no one can make bad use... That is, when you are acting from virtue, you cannot do a bad act. To act with a virtue is to always do something good. I think this relates to Moral virtues, but am not sure how it relates to intellectual virtues... eg if you have the virtue of surgery, and you perform a marvellous piece of surgical work, but you deliberately kill the patient, then it is a good act of surgery and you have used the virtue of surgery, but clearly morally a bad act.

We are what we repeatedly do...

"We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit"

Aristotle

Charisma Arts - Alpha Nice

The following is an excerpt from Dimitri, from charismaarts. http://www.charismaarts.com/blog/Dimitri/175

It seems to me that Charisma Arts is about helping people to meet and connect. It's not just about guys meeting girls, it's about being interested in people around you, male or female, it's about being nice and getting the girl of your dreams. Here is the excerpt that I read a while ago, and it's come back to me, so I thought that I would share it. The bold emphasis is mine

The Fundamental Principles, Part 1: Alpha Nice posted on Monday, April 16, 2007

The entire Juggler Method is rooted in a very few fundamental principles.

Those few principles are rooted in one: the principle of Alpha Nice.

...Alpha Nice does work very consistently when, say, our client who wisely chose New York as the location for his Charm School (if you can make it there you will make it anywhere) has a fascinating conversation with a woman he likes - and discovers suddenly that there is a pissed-off man nearby who had always wanted to talk to that woman exactly the way our client does now, but could not muster up the courage. In this case our client just invites the grumpy dude to join the conversation, and makes friends with him: a kind of graceful and self-assured behavior that prompts that woman swoon over our guy immediately for some magical reason.

Such is the power of Alpha Nice.

But Alpha Nice is bigger than that.

Rule #4 Make it fun.

nuff said