Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was Plato's student and Alexander the Great's tutor, and founded the Lyceum in Athens. His work spans logic, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetics — effectively the whole of the knowledge available to him. The Nicomachean Ethics, where he develops virtue as a mean between extremes, is still read as a living text.
About this theme: Happiness
Few subjects have been written about so much with so little agreement. For Aristotle happiness was not a feeling but a way of living — eudaimonia, visible only when a life is viewed whole. For the Epicureans it was the absence of disturbance. For the Stoics it was a consequence of virtue and never a target. None of these is the same as being in a good mood, yet that substitution is the one most often made.
More by Aristotle
More on Happiness
- The earth laughs in flowers.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
- True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.— Seneca
- He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.— Lao Tzu
- Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.— Epictetus
- He is richest who is content with the least.— Socrates