Are sycophants happier than principled actors?

[Ibn Khaldun]

Ibn Khaldun seems to think so. In many instances in his Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldun points out that some people seek proximity to power to achieve immediate gains. He characterizes such individuals as obsequious flatterers, sycophants with strong tendency for fawning, flattery, or adulation (tamalluq). While such individuals may gain favors from the rulers and persons in power, their practices, if sustained for long time, permanently imprints in them these traits and they become what they practice:  sycophants. They are happy when they gain what they seek, but they lose their social standing and become dependent on the Jaah of the individuals they align themselves with, those in power.