Aristotle sounds like a snotty man.

I've finally returned to reading a book of classic essays that I picked up awhile ago. In the second essay, one on the "Aim of Man" written by Aristotle (book 1 of his "Nichomachean Ethics"), he in a sidenote asserts that "...the man who is repulsive in appearance, or ill-born [by which he means not from a good, well-to-do family], or solitary and childless does not meet the requirements of a happy man..." because, apparently, "there are some things... the lack of which must mar felicity, such as good birth, fine children, and personal comeliness...."

Now just how does that strike you? What a culture he lived in. And how similar was it to ours, I wonder?