We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. But habit itself is not merely repetition — it is the slow carving of character, the way water shapes stone not by force but by persistence.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. And it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate 'apparent' ordinary people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.