The Big Aristotle

The Big and the Little Aristotle, a Boston University professor and the Big Apostle all agree on one thing: Virtue isn’t something that happens overnight.

Shaquille O'Neal is the given name of the most dominating player in the National Basketball Association right now.

But the Shaq likes to play around with other monikers. The NBA giant has referred to himself in the past as the Big Continuity, and the Big Legendary. Sometimes it's Shaq-speare because the Bard of Bel Air enjoys quoting the playwright of Stratford.

On the night when he accepted last season's Most Valuable Player award, however, the center for the Lakers said that "from this day on, I want to be known as 'The Big Aristotle' because Aristotle once said that excellence is not a singular act, it's a habit -- you are what you repeatedly do."

Over 2,000 years ago, The Little Aristotle wrote that "some [people] drink together, others dice together, others go in for athletics." O'Neal certainly falls into one of those categories, and -- who knows? -- perhaps the other two as well. Yet the Hollywood hoopster is on to something: virtue, as Aristotle suggested, is a state of ...