Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

The line expresses a characteristically pragmatic moral psychology: while effort and initiative do not guarantee a happy outcome, happiness is unlikely to arise in the absence of engagement with life. It implies that well-being is not merely a passive state bestowed by circumstances, but something cultivated through choices, habits, and purposeful activity. The aphorism also carries an ethical undertone—one must risk disappointment and uncertainty in order to create the conditions in which satisfaction, meaning, or joy can occur. In this sense it rebukes paralysis and resignation, urging action as the necessary precondition for any durable happiness.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.