For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity. Now ... it is not probable that these should be entirely mistaken, but rather that they should be right in at least some one respect or even in most respects.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- People define happiness differently as virtue, wisdom, or pleasure. Some of these views may be partially correct.
- In plain terms
- Different people think happiness comes from different things, and they might all be partly right.
- What can you take from it?
- Accept that happiness has many valid definitions.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What is your definition of happiness?
- Can happiness be measured objectively?
Another view
It does not tell us which definition is best.
More from Aristotle
One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
Permalink to quote #45 For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.... Now for most men their pleasures are in conflict with o…
Permalink to quote #47 If ... we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the func…
Permalink to quote #44
Related quotes
A man who has both knowledge and virtue is happy both here and in the Hereafter!
Ruhollah KhomeiniRuhollah Khomeini quote #20 For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.... Now for most men their pleasures are in conflict with o…
AristotleAristotle quote #47 Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous m…
Adam SmithAdam Smith quote #1