Me Thinks

Today I read Aristotle's ideas about happiness.  I did not agree with everything he said on the subject (the disagreeable excerpts are not shown in this post), but most of what he said was eloquent and thoughtful. Here are few fine excerpts from The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle:

What is the highest of all realizable goods? I suppose nearly all men are agreed; for the masses and the men of culture alike declare that it is happiness. Happiness if believed to be the most desirable thing in the world.

The happy man lives well and does well.

The fortunes of one and the same man often undergo many revolutions.  It cannot be right thus to follow fortune.  It is the excellent employment of his powers that constitutes his happiness.

The happy man will have this required property of permanence, and all through life will preserve his character; for he will be occupied continually, in excellent deeds, and what ever his fortune be, he will take it in the noblest fashion and bear himself always and in all things suitably, since he is truly good and "foursquare without a flaw."

True worth shines out even here, in the calm endurance of many great misfortunes, through nobility and greatness of soul.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.  The this be so, the happy man will never become miserable.

And by the excellence of man I mean excellence not of body, but of soul; for happiness we take to be an activity of the soul.