Q0499

Aristotle

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Perfect friendship is the friendship of those who are good and alike in virtue.
Thinker Aristotle
School Peripatetic School
Source Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3
Theme Friendship
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3, within the tradition of Peripatetic School. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of friendship, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Aristotle's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Aristotle. (n.d.). Perfect friendship is the friendship of those who are good and alike in virtue. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0499

MLA: Aristotle. “Perfect friendship is the friendship of those who….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0499.

Chicago: Aristotle. “Perfect friendship is the friendship of those who….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0499.

Same thinker

More from Aristotle

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
  3. Virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are brought to completion by habit.
  4. Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
  5. Man is by nature a political animal.

All quotations by Aristotle

Same theme

More on friendship

  1. A friend is another self.
  2. Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.
  3. If you wish to be loved, love.
  4. In the bitterest turns of fortune, true friends are proved.
  5. The Master said: Is it not a pleasure to learn and to practice what one has learned in due time? Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar? Is it not the mark of a gentleman to remain unresentful when others fail to appreciate one?

Browse the friendship theme