Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

Bennett links happiness less to pleasure or luck than to the inward verdict that one has met life with integrity and sustained effort. “Satisfaction after full honest effort” suggests a moral psychology: contentment arises when we can respect our own exertions, regardless of external outcomes. The second sentence sharpens this into a warning about regret—if a person senses they evaded a decisive responsibility (“paramount affairs”), no amount of comfort can fully compensate, because the self knows it withheld its best. The quote thus frames happiness as a byproduct of courage and conscientious engagement: taking up life’s challenges wholeheartedly is what makes later peace of mind possible.