Happiness

for both the multitude and persons of refinement speak of it as Happiness, and conceive the good life or doing well to be the same thing as being happy.

Happiness, therefore, being found to be something final and self-sufficient, is the End at which all actions aim.

if this is so, and if we declare that the function of man is a certain form of life, and define that form of life as the exercise of the soul’s faculties and activities in association with rational principle, and say that the function of a good man is to perform these activities well and rightly, and if a function is well performed when it is performed in accordance with its own proper excellence— …

Since happiness is the lost thing the human species goes seeking, and man is worthy of pursuing it so that his life shall not be squandered away between care and grief, delusion and fancies, sicknesses and pains, expansion and constriction, hardship and ease, poverty and wealth, honour and abasement — all of which, the moment he enters his grave, becomes a tale of what once was — it is a duty upon …

For there is no life for a frame set upon matter gathered out of the particles of the dust and then diversified in outward show, and no happiness (saʻādah) for one who prefers sights that change their colour from one hour to the next.

What a pity, then, for a nation that supposed happiness to be the hoarding of wealth and the cramming of bodily frames with the varieties of foods and drinks, that raced one another in the acquiring of sleek horses and towering palaces and took pride in servants and retinue and lineage, and left their souls to what they crave, and neglected their spirit and the law of their Lord, all the while rec …

for I assure you even now that if you do for me what you say you will, I, too, shall have and enjoy that life which others have always considered most blissful;

Then, overwhelmed by the afflictions I suffered in connection with my sons, I sent again and inquired of the god what I should do to pass the rest of my life most happily;

for when I think of your happiness hitherto, I am sorry for you, and I now restore to you your wife, whom you once had, your daughters (for I understand you have daughters), your friends, your servants, and the table that you and yours used to enjoy.

For education would make such beings not only happy in themselves, and successful in the management of their households, but capable of conferring happiness on their fellow-men and on states alike.

For those cities whose citizens abide by them prove strongest and enjoy most happiness;

It would be so, Euthydemus, were it not made up of goods that are questionable.

Of being happy, at least, being one thing, the virtues, being many, are causes;

and, secondly, in his right to provide for his general happiness and well-being, in addition to a mere subsistence.

Inasmuch as any given thing is wealth, because, and solely because, it may contribute to, or constitute, the happiness or well-being of man, it follows that every thing, that can contribute to, or constitute, his happiness or well-being, is necessarily wealth.

These rights, then, to live, and to obtain happiness, are the foundations of the right of property.

for you have learned by trial that, after wandering through how many things, you nowhere found the good life — not in syllogisms, not in wealth, not in fame, not in enjoyment, nowhere.