Aristotle quote on how developing friendship takes a long time

Question

Conor Gallagher, If Aristotle's Kid Had an iPod: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Parents ch. 10 says:

“WISHING TO BE FRIENDS IS QUICK WORK, BUT FRIENDSHIP IS A SLOW RIPENING FRUIT.”
—ARISTOTLE

I'm assuming this comes from Aristotle's Ethics bk. 8 or 9, but I can't find the reference exactly.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 06 '21 at 04:51

It's some sort of translation of the very last line of the Nicomachean Ethics Book VIII Part 3 1156^b25:

οἱ δὲ ταχέως τὰ φιλικὰ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ποιοῦντες βούλονται μὲν φίλοι εἶναι, οὐκ εἰσὶ δέ, εἰ μὴ καὶ φιλητοί, καὶ τοῦτ' ἴσασιν· βούλησις μὲν γὰρ ταχεῖα φιλίας γίνεται, φιλία δ' οὔ.

^{[W. D. Ross transl.:]}
Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.

^{[Alternative transl.:]
However, those who at once offer the services of friendship show that they wish to be friends but in fact are not unless they are lovable to each other and know it. So then the wish for friendship is quickly made but not friendship itself.}

^{[cf. DeepL transl.]}

Thanks for providing the Greek. I can see from that that the quote Conor Gallagher attributes to Aristotle takes quite some liberty with the text. If Gallagher didn't provide a citation for it in his book, I suspect he freestyled the translation himself, or (more likely) took it from some anonymous source (e.g. the blogosphere) that either freestyled their own translation or (more likely) freestyled an embellished paraphrase of the line from one of the published English translations, or (more likely) it came from a game of telephone where each transmission further altered it. — Dayv87, Aug 06 '21 at 05:24

Aristotle quote on how developing friendship takes a long time

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