Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.

Landor’s aphorism challenges the one-way moral maxim that virtue automatically produces happiness. He proposes a reciprocal relation: just as goodness can conduce to happiness, happiness—understood as a settled well-being rather than mere pleasure—can dispose people toward goodness. The thought implies that moral character is not formed only by stern self-denial; it is also nurtured by security, contentment, and the absence of misery’s pressures. In ethical terms, the line pushes back against purely ascetic accounts of virtue and suggests a social insight: improving human conditions may itself be a moralizing force, because people who are less desperate, fearful, or embittered find it easier to act generously and justly.