ConquestOfHappiness
Conquest of Happiness (Bertrand Russell)
- Solid. Worth the reread.
- This book is not addressed to highbrows, or to those who regard a practical problem merely as something to be talked about. It is in the belief that many people who are unhappy could become happy by well-directed effort that I have written this book.
- Though the kinds are different you will find that unhappiness meets you everywhere.
- My purpose is to suggest a cure for the ordinary day-to-day unhappiness from which most people in civilized countries suffer, and which is all the more unbearable because, having no obvious external cause, it appears inescapable. I believe this unhappiness to be very largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics, mistaken habits of life, leading to destruction of that natural zest and appetite for possible things upon which all happiness, whether of men or animals, ultimately depends. These are matters which lie within the power of the individual, and I propose to suggest the change by which happiness, given average good fortune , may be achieved.
- Vanity, which it passes beyond a point, kills pleasure in every activity for its own sake, and thus leads inevitable to listlessness and boredom.
- An unhappy man has come to value one kind of satisfaction more than any other.
- Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
- The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
- If your child is ill, you may be unhappy, but you will not feel that all is vanity; you will feel that the restoring of the child to health is a matter to be attended to regardless of the question whether there is ultimate value in human life or not.
- The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life, and when by means of great wealth, homo sapiens can gratify all his whims without effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. Fasting
- A man must feel tragedy; to feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives.
- Boredom as a factor in human behavior has received far less attention than it deserves.
- When one goes further into the past the boredom becomes still worse.
Too much excitement not only undermines health, but dulls the palate for every kind of pleasure, substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty. Too little excitement may produce morbid cravings; too much will produce exhausting. A certain power of enduring boredom is essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young.
- A child develops best when, like a young plant, he is left undisturbed in the same soil.
- A child or young man who has some serious constructive purpose will endure voluntarily a great deal of boredom if he finds that it is necessary. But constructive purposes do not easily for themselves in a boys mind if he is living a life of distractions, in that case his thoughts will always be directed towards the next pleasure rather than towards the distant achievement. A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers.
- A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
- Purely physical fatigue, provided it is not excessive, tends to be a cause of happiness; it leads to sound sleep and a good appetite and gives zest to the pleasures that are possible on holidays.
- Most people cannot stop from worrying about things that they cannot control. The wise man things about his troubles only when he can do something about them.
It is amazing how much happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times.
When a difficult or worrying decision has to reached, as soon as all the data are available, give the matter you best thought and make your decision; having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing so futile.
- Our doings are not so important as we naturally suppose; our successes and failures do not after all matter very much. Even great sorrows can be survived. The man who can center his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life which is impossible to the pure egoist.
"Hygiene of the nerves" has been much too little studied.
There has been a great deal of study by psychologists of the operation of the unconscious on the conscious, but much less of the operation of the conscious on the unconscious. Yet the latter is of vast importance in the subject of mental hygiene.
If I have to write upon some difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity – the greatest intensity of which you are capable – for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak, that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.
- A similar process as above can be adopted with regard to anxieties. When some misfortune threatens, consider seriously and deliberately what is the very worst that could possibly happen. Having looked this possible misfortune in the face, give yourself sound reason for thinking that after all it would be no such very terrible disaster. When you have looked for some time at the worst possibility you will find that your worry diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent.
- Every kind of fear grows worse by not being looked at.
- Next to worry, one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
To realize the causes of ones own envious feelings is to take a long step towards curing them. The habit of thinking in terms of comparison is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed in full, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else.
- You cannot get away from envy by success alone; there will always be someone else more successful. You can get away from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom you imagine to be more fortunate than yourself.
- The essentials of human happiness are simple, so simple that sophisticated people cannot bring themselves to admit what it is they really lack.
- A modest estimate of ones owns powers is a source of happiness; pleasures of achievement demand difficulties such that beforehand success seems doubtful although in the end it is actually achieved. Better to be surprised by success than failure.
- Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.
- To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
- The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
- To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, is to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.
- Men that feel that they must "sleep on it" before coming to an important decision are profoundly right. But it is not only in sleep that the subconsciousness can work. They can work also while a mans conscious mind is occupied elsewhere.
- If you have as part of the habitual furniture of your mind the past ages of man, his slow and partial emergence out of barbarism, and the brevity of his total existence in comparison with astronomical epochs, you will realize that the momentary battle upon which you are engaged cannot be of such importance as to risk a backward step towards the darkness out of which we have been slowly emerging.
- If I could organize higher education as I should wish it to be, I would seek to make you people vividly aware of the past, vividly realizing that the figure of man will in all likelihood be immeasurable longer than his past, profoundly conscious of the minuteness of the planet upon which we live and of the fact that life on this planet is only a temporary incident; and at the same time in which these facts are emphasizing the insignificance of the individual, I should present quite another set of facts designed to impress upon the mind the greatness of which the individual is capable.
- The man whose mind mirrors the world becomes in a sense as great as the world
- To be defeated by one loss or even by several is not something that is to be admired as a proof of sensibility, but something to be deplored as a failure in vitality.
- Countries which believe in resignation and what is mistakenly called a "spiritual" view of life are countries with a high infant mortality. Those who think that matter is an illusion are apt to think the same of dirt, and by so thinking to cause their children to die.
The attitude that is required is doing ones best while leaving the issue to fate.
The wise man fails to observe the dust that the housemaid has not dusted, the potato that the cook has not cooked, and the soot that the sweep has not swept.
Its not that he takes no steps to remedy these matters, if he has the time to do so, only that he deals with them without emotion.
Worry and fret and irritation are emotions which serve no purpose (JA: other than signals)
- The recipe for happiness is a simple one. Certain things are indispensable to the happiness of most men, but these are simple things: food and shelter, health, love successful work and the respect of ones own herd.