Which is the better choice for the final end of man: happiness, or quietude?

The Case for happiness being man's chief goal:

Pro: Nobody wants to be miserable forever.

Con: There are certain stories where the hero is happier even with (because of?) great pain and anguish. E.g. The Thing's (Fantastic Four featuring Reed Richards) perpetual existence as an anthropomorphic rock creature even though, in some sense, he would rather be a human again. These seem analogous to the human story of the unhappy marriage, which is the oldest example of "tied hands" ever written.

The Case for quietude being man's chief goal:

Pro: It is simpler than the con brought up above. It captures the familiar notion that nobody, really, desires tied hands (like The Thing).

Con: It's disrespected. Religions that teach quietism are considered cheeky, and in the Catholic Church, it is even heresy to state that quietude is the preferred end of man. It's a type of doubt.

It seems that The Thing, emotionally speaking, is the story of the unhappy marriage. He is unhappily married to his body, but much like how most husbands do not have the ability to choose a new wife and get more from the second-order effects of their traditional wedding ("the old wine is better"), his attempts to revert back to Ben Grimm are not unlike the husband looking for a second, third, fourth, etc... wife.

Another confounding factor is distinguishing between the unhappy marriage (symbolic name: Lot's wife) from the weird marriage (symbolic name: Frankenstein's Bride), because that affects the interpretation of the story.

Take, for instance, Aladdin's choice to change from Chinese to Arabic. Is he stuck there because he's married to his yellow-skinned body like Lot's Wife? Or does he genuinely think Islam is the true religion? There are many men who think that American men wanting to change into Japanese are just as insane. But these are really stories of Frankenstein's Bride; the guy really loves his choice, even though nobody else does. And philosophically speaking, they don't raise the same red flag Lot's Wife does.

Aladdin chimes in. Apologies for the dumb artwork:

A point needs to be made regarding the story of "war hero honors" (e.g. body defects being accepted because the hero likes the legacy), but these are for another time. There isn't an easy answer for this without coming across as authoritarian.