I recently remarked on re-reading Russell’s basic, The Conquest of Happiness. Within the meantime I’ve found a variety of quotable gems within the e book. Listed below are a quote or two from every chapter.
From Chap. 1 – What Makes Individuals Sad
“I take pleasure in life; I would virtually say that with yearly that passes I take pleasure in it extra. That is due partly to having found what had been the issues that I most desired and having progressively acquired lots of this stuff. Partly it is because of having efficiently dismissed sure objects of need — such because the acquisition of indubitable data about one thing or different — as basically unattainable. However very largely it is because of a diminishing preoccupation with myself. … Steadily I realized to be detached to myself and my deficiencies; I got here to centre my consideration more and more upon exterior objects: the state of the world, numerous branches of information, people for whom I felt affection.”
“Self-absorption is of varied sorts. We might take the sinner, the narcissist, and the megalomaniac as three quite common sorts. … This man [the sinner] is perpetually incurring his personal disapprova … He has a picture of himself as he thinks he must be, which is in continuous battle along with his data of himself as he’s….Narcissism is, in a way, the converse of an recurring sense of sin; it consists within the behavior of admiring oneself and wishing to be admired….When self-importance is carried to this top, there isn’t any real curiosity in some other individual, and subsequently no actual satisfaction to be obtained from love….The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the truth that he needs to be highly effective somewhat than charming, and seeks to be feared somewhat than liked. To this sort belong many lunatics and many of the nice males in historical past.”
Chap. 2 – Byronic Unhappiness
” I don’t myself suppose that there’s any superior rationality in being sad. The sensible man shall be as completely satisfied as circumstances allow and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful past a degree, he’ll ponder one thing else as a substitute. . . . the reality is that they’re sad for some cause of which they aren’t conscious, and this unhappiness leads them to dwell upon the much less agreeable traits of the world wherein they reside.”
Chap. 3 – Competitors
“What individuals imply, subsequently, by the wrestle for all times is admittedly the wrestle for fulfillment. What individuals concern once they have interaction within the wrestle isn’t that they may fail to get their breakfast subsequent morning, however that they may fail to outshine their neighbours. It is vitally singular how little males appear to understand that they aren’t caught within the grip of a mechanism from which there isn’t any escape, however that the treadmill is one upon which they continue to be merely as a result of they haven’t observed that it fails to take them as much as the next stage….The basis of the difficulty springs from an excessive amount of emphasis upon aggressive success as the primary supply of happiness.”
“Training was once conceived very largely as a coaching within the capability for enjoyment — enjoyment, I imply, of these extra delicate sorts that aren’t open to wholly uncultivated individuals. Within the eighteenth century it was one of many marks of a ‘gentleman’ to take a discriminating pleasure in literature, photos, and music. We these days might disagree along with his style, nevertheless it was not less than real. The wealthy man of the current day tends to be of fairly a distinct kind. He by no means reads. If he’s creating an image gallery with a view to enhancing his fame, he depends upon specialists to decide on his photos; the pleasure that he derives from them isn’t the pleasure of them, however the pleasure of stopping another wealthy man from having them.”
Chap. 4 – Boredom and Pleasure
“We’re much less bored than our ancestors had been, however we’re extra afraid of boredom. We’ve come to know, or somewhat to consider, that boredom isn’t a part of the pure lot of man, however will be prevented by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of pleasure….Younger males and younger girls meet one another with a lot much less problem than was previously the case, and each housemaid expects not less than as soon as every week as a lot pleasure as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine all through an entire novel.”
“I’m not ready to say that medication can play no good half in life in anyway. There are moments, for instance, when an opiate shall be prescribed by a sensible doctor, and I feel these moments extra frequent than prohibitionists suppose. However the yearning for medication is definitely one thing which can’t be left to the unfettered operation of pure impulse. And the sort of boredom which the individual accustomed to medication experiences when disadvantaged of them is one thing for which I can counsel no treatment besides time. Now what applies to medication applies additionally, inside limits, to each sort of pleasure. A life too full of pleasure is an exhausting life, wherein frequently stronger stimuli are wanted to provide the joys that has come to be thought an important a part of pleasure. An individual accustomed to an excessive amount of pleasure is sort of a individual with a morbid yearning for pepper, who comes final to be unable even to style a amount of pepper which might trigger anybody else to choke. … A sure energy of tolerating boredom is subsequently important to a cheerful life, and is likely one of the issues that must be taught to the younger.
Chap. 5 – Fatigue
“Purely bodily fatigue, supplied it’s not extreme, tends if something to be a explanation for happiness; it results in sound sleep and a superb urge for food, and provides zest to the pleasures which can be potential on holidays. However when it’s extreme it turns into a really grave evil. . . . Bodily labour carried past a sure level is atrocious torture, and it has very continuously been carried as far as to make life all however insufferable.”
“Even nice sorrows will be survived; troubles which appear as if they need to put an finish to happiness for all times fade with the lapse of time till it turns into virtually inconceivable to recollect their poignancy. However over and above these self-centred issues is the truth that one’s ego isn’t any very massive a part of the world. The person who can centre his ideas and hopes upon one thing transcending self can discover a sure peace within the odd troubles of life which is inconceivable to the pure egoist….My very own perception is {that a} acutely aware thought will be planted into the unconscious if a enough quantity of vigour and depth is put into it….A person who has learnt to not really feel concern will discover the fatigue of every day life enormously diminished.”
Chap. 6 – Envy
“Envy is itself a horrible impediment to happiness. I feel envy is immensely promoted by misfortunes in childhood. The kid who finds a brother or sister most popular earlier than himself acquires the behavior of envy, and when he goes out into the world appears to be like for injustices of which he’s the sufferer, perceives them without delay in the event that they happen, and imagines them if they don’t….Merely to understand the causes of 1’s personal envious emotions is to take an extended step in direction of curing them. The behavior of considering by way of comparisons is a deadly one. When something nice happens it must be loved to the total, with out stopping to suppose that it’s not so nice as one thing else that will probably be occurring to another person….With the sensible man, what he has doesn’t stop to be pleasant as a result of another person has one thing else. Envy, actually, is one type of a vice, partly ethical, partly mental, which consists in seeing issues by no means in themselves, however solely of their relations….You can’t, subsequently, get away from envy by the use of success alone, for there’ll at all times be in historical past or legend some individual much more profitable than you might be. You will get away from envy by having fun with the pleasures that come your means, by doing the work that it’s important to do, and by avoiding comparisons with these whom you think about, maybe fairly falsely, to be extra lucky than your self.”
Chap. 7 – The Sense of Sin
“As a matter of truth the sense of sin, so removed from being a explanation for s good life, is kind of the reverse. It makes a person sad and it makes him really feel inferior. Being sad, he’s more likely to make claims upon different individuals that are extreme and which stop him from having fun with happiness in private relations. Feeling inferior, he may have a grudge in opposition to those that appear superior. He’ll discover admiration troublesome and envy straightforward. He’ll develop into a usually unpleasant individual, and can discover himself an increasing number of solitary. An expansive and beneficiant perspective in direction of different individuals not solely provides happiness to others, however is an immense supply of happiness to its possessor, because it causes him to be usually appreciated. However such an perspective is scarcely potential to the person haunted by a way of sin.”
Chap. 8 – Persecuation Mania
“Probably the most common types of irrationality is the perspective taken by virtually everyone in direction of malicious gossip. Only a few individuals can resist saying malicious issues about their acquaintances, and even occasionally about their pals; but when individuals hear that something has been mentioned in opposition to themselves, they’re stuffed with indignant amazement. It has apparently by no means occurred to them that, simply as they gossip about everybody else, so everybody else gossips about them….This offers them a mistaken sense of proportion, and causes them to connect undue significance to information that are maybe distinctive somewhat than typical.”
9. Concern of Public Opinion
“I feel that usually, aside from professional opinion, there’s an excessive amount of respect paid to the opinions of others, each in nice issues and in small ones. One ought to as a rule respect public opinion in as far as is critical to keep away from hunger and to maintain out of jail, however something that goes past that is voluntary submission to an pointless tyranny, and is more likely to intrude with happiness in every kind of the way….Concern of public opinion, like each different type of concern, is oppressive and stunts progress. It’s troublesome to realize any sort of greatness whereas a concern of this type stays robust, and it’s inconceivable to accumulate that freedom of spirit wherein true happiness consists, for it’s important to happiness that our way of life ought to spring from our personal deep impulses and never from the unintentional tastes and needs of those that occur to be our neighbours, and even our relationships.”
Chap. 10 – Is Happiness Nonetheless Doable?
“Cynicism equivalent to one finds very continuously among the many most extremely educated younger women and men of the West outcomes from the mixture of consolation with powerlessness. Powerlessness makes individuals really feel that nothing is price doing, and luxury makes the painfulness of this sense simply endurable….The happiness of the reformer or revolutionary relies upon upon the course of public affairs, however in all probability even whereas he’s being executed he enjoys extra actual happiness than is feasible for the comfy cynic.”
Chap. 11 – Zest
“The extra issues a person is fascinated by, the extra alternatives of happiness he has, and the much less he’s on the mercy of destiny, since if he loses one factor he can fall again upon one other. Life is just too quick to be fascinated by every little thing, however it’s good to be fascinated by as many issues as are essential to fill our days….Adventurous males take pleasure in shipwrecks, mutinies, earthquakes, conflagrations, and every kind of disagreeable experiences, supplied they don’t go as far as to impair well being. They are saying to themselves in an earthquake, for instance, ‘So that’s what an earthquake is like’, and it provides them pleasure to have their data of the world elevated by this new merchandise.”
Chap. 12 – Affection
“One of the best kind of affection is reciprocally life-giving; every receives affection with pleasure and provides it with out effort, and every finds the entire world extra fascinating in consequence of the existence of this reciprocal happiness. There’s, nonetheless, one other form, not at all unusual, wherein one individual sucks the vitality of the opposite, one receives what the opposite provides, however provides virtually nothing in return. Some very very important individuals belong to this bloodsucking kind. They extract the vitality from one sufferer after one other, however whereas they prosper and develop fascinating, these upon whom they reside develop pale and dim and uninteresting. Such individuals use others as means to their very own ends, and by no means take into account them as ends in themselves. Essentially they aren’t fascinated by these whom for the second they suppose they love; they’re solely within the stimulus to their very own actions, maybe of a fairly impersonal kind. Evidently this springs from some defect of their nature, however it’s one not altogether straightforward both to diagnose or to treatment. It’s a attribute continuously related to nice ambition, and is rooted, I ought to say, in an unduly one-sided view of what makes human happiness.”
Chap. 13 – Household
“This failure of the household to offer the basic satisfaction which in precept it’s able to yielding is likely one of the most deep-seated causes of the discontent which is prevalent in our age.”
Chap. 14 – Work
“Constant goal isn’t sufficient to make life completely satisfied, however it’s an virtually indispensable situation of a cheerful life. And constant goal embodies itself primarily in work.”
Chap. 15 – Impersonal Pursuits
“One of many sources of unhappiness, fatigue, and nervous pressure is incapability to be fascinated by something that isn’t of sensible significance in a single’s personal life. The results of that is that the acutely aware thoughts will get no relaxation from a sure small variety of issues, every of which in all probability includes some nervousness and a few ingredient of fear….The result’s excitability, lack of sagacity, irritability, and a lack of sense of proportion. All these are each causes and results of fatigue. As a person will get extra drained, his exterior pursuits fade, and as they fade he loses the aid which they afford him and turns into nonetheless extra drained. This vicious circle is just too apt to finish in a breakdown.”
“A person who has as soon as perceived, nonetheless quickly and nonetheless briefly, what makes greatness of soul, can now not be completely satisfied if he permits himself to be petty, self-seeking, troubled by trivial misfortunes, dreading what destiny might have in retailer for him. The person able to greatness of soul will open large the home windows of his thoughts, letting the winds blow freely upon it from each portion of the universe. He’ll see himself and life and the world as actually as our human limitations will allow; realising the brevity and minuteness of human life, he’ll realise additionally that in particular person minds is concentrated no matter of worth the identified universe comprises. And he’ll see that the person whose thoughts mirrors the world turns into in a way as nice because the world. In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he’ll expertise a profound pleasure, and thru all of the vicissitudes of his outward life he’ll stay within the depths of his being a cheerful man.”
Chap. 16 – Effort and Resignation
“The sensible man, although he is not going to sit down beneath preventable misfortunes, is not going to waste time and emotion upon equivalent to are unavoidable, and even equivalent to are in themselves avoidable he’ll undergo if the time and labour required to keep away from them would intrude with the pursuit of some extra essential object. Many individuals get into fret or a fury over each little factor that goes mistaken, and on this means waste an excessive amount of power that is perhaps extra usefully employed. Even within the pursuit of actually essential objects it’s unwise to develop into so deeply concerned emotionally that the considered potential failure turns into a relentless menace to peace of thoughts.”
“Some persons are unable to bear with persistence even these minor troubles which make up, if we allow them to take action, a really massive a part of life. They’re livid once they miss a practice, transported with rage if their dinner is badly cooked, sunk in despair if the chimney smokes, and vowing vengeance in opposition to the entire industrial order when their garments fail to return from the sanitary steam laundry. The power that such individuals waste on trivial troubles can be enough, if extra correctly directed, to make and unmake empires. The sensible man fails to look at the mud that the housemaid has not dusted, the potato that the prepare dinner has not cooked, and the soot that the sweep has not swept. I don’t imply that he takes no steps to treatment these issues, supplied he has time to take action; I imply solely that he offers with them with out emotion. Fear and fret and irritation are feelings which serve no goal.”
Chap. 17 – The Blissful Man
“The person who’s sad will, as a rule, undertake an sad creed, whereas the person who’s completely satisfied will undertake a cheerful creed; every might attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, whereas the true causation is the opposite means spherical. Sure issues are indispensable to the happiness of most males, however these are easy issues: meals and shelter, well being, love, profitable work and the respect of 1’s personal herd. To some individuals parenthood additionally is important. The place this stuff are missing; solely the distinctive man can obtain happiness, however the place they’re loved, or will be obtained by well-directed effort, the person who remains to be sad is affected by some psychological maladjustment which, if it is rather grave, might have the companies of a psychiatrist, however can in odd circumstances be cured by the affected person himself, supplied he units in regards to the matter in the best means….It must be our endeavour subsequently, each in schooling and in makes an attempt to regulate ourselves to the world, to intention at avoiding self-centred passions and at buying these affections and people pursuits which is able to stop our ideas from dwelling perpetually upon ourselves. It’s not the character of most males to be completely satisfied in a jail, and the passions which shut us up in ourselves represent one of many worst sorts of prisons. Amongst such passions a few of the commonest are concern, envy, the sense of sin, self-pity and self-admiration. In all these our needs are centred upon ourselves: there isn’t any real curiosity within the outer world, however solely a priority lest it ought to indirectly injure us or fail to feed our ego.”
Russell concludes,
“The truth is the entire antithesis between self and the remainder of the world, which is implied within the doctrine of self-denial, disappears as quickly as we have now any real curiosity in individuals or issues exterior ourselves. By way of such pursuits a person involves really feel himself a part of the stream of life, not a tough separate entity like a billiard-ball, which might haven’t any relation with different such entities besides that of collision. All unhappiness relies upon upon some sort of disintegration or lack of integration; there’s disintegration inside the self by lack of coordination between the acutely aware and the unconscious thoughts; there’s lack of integration between the self and society the place the 2 will not be knit collectively by the drive of goal pursuits and affections. The completely satisfied man is the person who doesn’t endure from both of those failures of unity, whose character is neither divided in opposition to itself nor pitted in opposition to the world. Such a person feels himself a citizen of the universe, having fun with freely the spectacle that it provides and the thrill that it affords, untroubled by the considered demise as a result of he feels himself not likely separate from those that will come after him. It’s in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the best pleasure is to be discovered.”
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