"The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness"
About this Quote
Van Doren’s line has the calm authority of a guide who knows you’re skimming and wants you to slow down. By naming “the last part” and then snapping it into the present tense - “the part you’re now approaching” - he turns reading into a small moral test: will you finish, or will you quit right before the payoff? It’s motivational, but not in the poster-quote way. It flatters the reader as someone capable of doing the hard, unglamorous thing: staying with an argument until it cashes out in how to live.
The Aristotle reference isn’t decorative. Aristotle’s happiness (eudaimonia) is not a mood but a practice, a life shaped by habits and judgment. Van Doren uses that cultural prestige to reframe a mundane moment - reaching the end of a chapter, a course, a thought - as a rehearsal for flourishing. The subtext: happiness is less about acquiring insights than about enduring the process that makes insight usable.
Context matters because Van Doren’s own public story is tangled with performance, credibility, and the cost of shortcuts. As a celebrity intellectual who became famous through a quiz-show scandal, he’s an unlikely messenger for “the last part” being the most important. That tension gives the sentence an extra charge: it reads like a quiet corrective to a culture obsessed with quick wins and headline knowledge. Aristotle becomes a way to say, politely but firmly, that the closing stretch is where character shows up.
The Aristotle reference isn’t decorative. Aristotle’s happiness (eudaimonia) is not a mood but a practice, a life shaped by habits and judgment. Van Doren uses that cultural prestige to reframe a mundane moment - reaching the end of a chapter, a course, a thought - as a rehearsal for flourishing. The subtext: happiness is less about acquiring insights than about enduring the process that makes insight usable.
Context matters because Van Doren’s own public story is tangled with performance, credibility, and the cost of shortcuts. As a celebrity intellectual who became famous through a quiz-show scandal, he’s an unlikely messenger for “the last part” being the most important. That tension gives the sentence an extra charge: it reads like a quiet corrective to a culture obsessed with quick wins and headline knowledge. Aristotle becomes a way to say, politely but firmly, that the closing stretch is where character shows up.
Quote Details
| Topic | Happiness |
|---|
More Quotes by Charles
Add to List
