Aristotle - Happiness Quotes

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A thing chosen always as an end and never as a means we call absolutely final. Now happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else.

Aristotle
Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body;

Aristotle
Leisure of itself gives pleasure and happiness and enjoyment of life, which are experienced, not by the busy man, but by those who have leisure.

Aristotle
What is the highest of all goods achievable by action?...both the general run of man and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness...but with regard to what happiness is they differ.

Aristotle
It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite.

Aristotle
If happiness, then, is activity expressing virtue, it is reasonable for it to express the supreme virtue, which will be the virtueof the best thing.

Aristotle
Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.

Aristotle
The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.

Aristotle
No one praises happiness as one praises justice, but we call it a 'blessing,' deeming it something higher and more divine than things we praise.

Aristotle
A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life; but he can only attain happiness under the opposite conditions

Aristotle
Happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect goodness

Aristotle
True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.

Aristotle
It is our actions and the soul's active exercise of its functions that we posit (as being Happiness);

Aristotle
Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue

Aristotle
We maintain, and have said in the Ethics, if the arguments there adduced are of any value, that happiness is the realization and perfect exercise of virtue, and this not conditional, but absolute. And I used the term 'conditional' to express that which is indispensable, and 'absolute' to express that which is good in itself.

Aristotle
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Aristotle
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 one another because these are not by nature pleasant, but the lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; and virtuous actions are such... Happiness then is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world, and these attributes are not severed as in the inscription at Delos: Most noble is that which is justest, and best is health; but pleasantest is it to win what we love.

Aristotle
In a word, everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else—except happiness, which is an end.

Aristotle
Happiness itself is sufficient excuse. Beautiful things are right and true; so beautiful actions are those pleasing to the gods. Wise men have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a man's own breast. Trust thyself.

Aristotle
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

Aristotle
May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly, because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing the good things we have specified to be supremely blessed, though on the human scale of bliss.

Aristotle
And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.

Aristotle
Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

Aristotle
The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue. Moreover, this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly, one day or brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy.

Aristotle
Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.

Aristotle
People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.

Aristotle
One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly, one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

Aristotle
If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle
Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions.

Aristotle
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.

Aristotle