The theoretical life...

Aristotle defends the theoretical life as the true end of education and the source of happiness. One does not require more than the bare necessities of life to achieve happiness in thought, nor is the active life of the mind dependent  upon  the inherently unequal endowments of nature. One need be neither strong nor handsome, well-born nor gregarious, nay, not even brilliant to participate happily in the theoretical life.  The theoretical life completes the individual, holding him against the warmth of the divine spark in his nature and making sense of an existence otherwise consumed by the infinite wishing of one thing for the sake of another.  indeed, the theoretical life is a life of virtue, so long as we mean by virtue all that the Greek arete expresses: the life that knows and reveres, speculates and acts upon the Good, that loves and reproduces the Beautiful, and that pursues excellence and moderation in all things...
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.21