LENGTH OF HAPPINESS DOES NOT AFFECT ITS QUALITY.
5. Would equal happiness be predicated of three men, one who had been happy from his life's beginning to its end, the other only at its end, and the third, who had been happy, but who ceased being such.[55] This comparison is not between three men who are happy, but between one man who is happy, with two who are deprived of happiness, and that at the (present moment) when happiness (counts most). If then one of them have any advantage, he possesses it as a man actually happy compared with such as are not; he therefore surpasses the two others by the actual possession of happiness.