A life with much contemplation is preferable because good things will make good people happy. Intention and action are the highest good and will enable us to find the right path in life. Albert Einstein writes in Ideas and Opinions (1954):

Everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavors and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves—such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like-mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty.