"The good man is always happy; his state is tranquil, his disposition contented and undisturbed by any so-called evils--if he is really good. If anyone looks for another kind of pleasure in the life of virtue it is not the life of virtue he is looking for." --Plotinus, On Well-Being.
"Happiness and blessedness do not consist in vast possessions or exalted occupations or offices of authority, but on impassivity, calmness, and a disposition of the soul that sets its own limits in accord with nature." --Plutarch, How To Study Poetry.
"Spices can impart their fragrances to clouts and ragged clothes, while silk itself stinks if stale with sweat. In the same way any station in life is enjoyable if virtue be added, while vice makes tedious and intolerable what seems most splendid." --Erasmus, Parallels
"After experience has taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything good or bad, except insofar as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether in fact, there might be anything to which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. I say 'finally resolved,' for at first sight it seemed unwise willingly to lose hold on what was sure for the sake of something then uncertain. I could see the benefits which are acquired through fame and riches, and that I should be required to abandon such objects, if I seriously devoted myself to the search for something different and new. . . the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under three heads---Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good. [Yet] I recognized that the acquisition of wealth, sensual pleasure, or fame, is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought as ends not as means; if they be sought as means they will be under restraint, as far from being hindrances, will further not a little the end for which they are sought . . . " --Benedict de Spinoza, Improvement of the Understanding,Ethics and Correspondence.
" If you learn to like poetry, it will give you pleasure all your life," [F.] Scott [Fitzgerald] promised me. It has. And the joy of music. . . . A two-year course or even four years cannot educate you in the complete sense of the word, but it gave me, as I said at the beginning of this book, a key. It widened my horizon. I now know where to look. I know how to evaluate. I am curious. I am open for new ideas and facts. The politicians and biased historians cannot fool me anymore. To understand the present and the future, you must know something of the past. I can relate today to yesterday. I am involved. I make up my own mind. I ask questions. . . . It isn't only what you learn as a student, it's what you do with it in the unshepherded world where there are no familiar tracks, where there is no longer a teacher to pressure or to prod you into reading so many pages a day. With the right groundwork, you can go on receiving pleasure from books and ideas for the rest of your life, which was the case with Scott and which has been true with me." Sheilah Graham, College of One
"There is something essentially companionable about the man with habits. A habit is proof of contentment, of satisfaction. The man with habits accepts life as essentially a good thing. Otherwise he would have made experiments." Alex Waugh, Myself When Young
"Cicero's reasoning reinforced a thought I had had for some time in vague, undefined form. It seems to me that there are two possible ways of achieving satisfaction or contentment. The normal, and by far the preferable way, is by striving to achieve what one wants. But in the face of insuperable handicaps, such as those presented by physical deformity and those inherent in imprisonment, there still remains a way to achieve contentment. One can train oneself to want only what one can obtain. The thirty-five foot wall that surrounds the prison becomes a barrier for me only if and when I attempt to cross it. There may be an unscalable cliff or an uncrossable crevasse high in the Himalayas. But this does not constitute a barrier for me; it is a barrier only for those who want to get to the other side. And the difference between the deprivations of prison and the restrictions upon complete freedom in normal extramural society is one of degree only: there are few folks so fortunately situated as to be able to take a trip to Europe, for example, whenever the whim strikes them. The restrictions are economic and social rather than physical; they are none the less stringent. . . . Then there was the possibility of suicide . . . the reasons in its favor were somewhat less. Stateville was very much better than Joliet; here one had a chance to stay reasonably clean and reasonably comfortable physically. Besides, we had one great luxury: almost unlimited leisure. Here was something that most people in the free world did not have. With the free time at my disposal I could read what I liked and study what I liked. Economic considerations need not be taken into account; a thing need not be useful. Sine I was under no necessity of earning a living, I could poke my nose into as many completely useless fields as chanced to take my fancy. . . I compared my lot with that of some people in the free world and decided that I was not too badly off. . . would I, for instance, be willing to trade places with a coal miner, doomed to remain a coal miner all his life? I thought not. True, he had his freedom. That is, he had freedom in a legal sense; no one was penning him up in a given enclosure. But wasn't he just as surely penned up by economic circumstance, by lack of opportunity? He had to work hard all day-much harder than I. In the evening he was probably too physically exhausted to do much but sleep, and he probably lacked the intellectual curiosity and the educational equipment to do much mental work. About all I envied him was the right to quit and that right, by hypothesis, he was prevented by economic necessity from exercising. No, I didn't think I'd trade places with him if I could." Nathan F. Leopold, Life Plus 99 Years
"The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants to return its love, its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy . . . . The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious, clamoring mind will hush if you give it an egg." Annie Dillard, Teaching A Stone To Talk
"Brillat-Savarin [is] the patron saint of gourmets. [O]ne of his sisters, two months before her hundredth birthday, uttered her last words--words which are graven on the heart of every true gastronome. They were 'Vite, apportez moi les dessert, je sens que je vais passer." (Quick, bring me the dessert--I feel I'm going.) Laurence Durrell, Spirit of Place
"When a man asked [Demonax] what he thought was the definition of happiness, he replied that 'none but a free man is happy;' and when the other said that 'free men were numerous,' he rejoined: 'But I have in mind the man who neither hopes nor fears for anything.' 'But how can one achieve this? For the most part we are all slaves of hope and fear.' 'Why, if you observe human affairs you will find that they do not afford justification either for hope or for fear since, whatever you may say, pains and pleasures are alike destined to end.'" --Lucian, Demonax
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.
--Emily Dickinson
"[I]t is clear that suicides are always merely the result of hope deceived. Therefore one must not build up such a hope when it is not destined to be fulfilled, and whoever does so is a monster. Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretches' soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area that is already lacerated." --The Marquis de Sade, letter from prison to his wife Madame de Sade, 20 February 1781.
"Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, worldlings puke up their sick existence by suicide, in the midst of luxury." --Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
"[Kenneth and I] sat talking of how happy we both felt and of how it couldn't surely, last. We'd have to pay for it. Or we'd been struck down from afar by disaster because we were, perhaps, too happy. To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature, and when to the above list one adds that daily I have the company of beautiful fifteen-year-old boys who find (for a small fee) fucking with me a delightful sensation, no man can want for more." Joe Orton, The Orton Diaries [Kenneth was Orton's lover who, a few weeks after this diary entry, killed Orton with a hammer].
Hamlet: I have of late--but wherefore I know not-- lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire-- why it appeareth no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of the animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me-- no, nor women either, though by your smiling you seem to say so."
--William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned.
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done.
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to look at the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of Vikings and whalers
In the days of the Viking and whale.
They sport on the brink
Of the shad and the shark;
If it's windy they sink;
If it isn't, they park.
It is pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
To gaze without having to sail.
Of the air and the sand and the sun;
Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.
--Ogden Nash
"Crippled wrists make writing slow and laborious. But, while writing to you, I lose the sense of these things, in the recollection of ancient times, when youth and health made happiness out of everything. . . The summum bonum with me now is trully Epicurean, ease of body and tranquility of mind; and to these I wish to consign my remaining days. " Thomas Jefferson letters to John Adams
"One of the charms of serious living is that it keeps passing over into play. Usually young men run and jump because they like to try their agility against other young men, just as girls like singing and dancing together with other girls. The notion of training for years to run and jump in order that this activity may serve some other aim particularly an aim so remote from play as [commercial,] political and social aggrandizement that notion is basically corrupt." Gilbert Highet
"Others, again are of the opinion that arbitrary and tyrannical rule alone comports with happiness; indeed in some states the entire aim of the laws is to give men despotic power over their neighbors . . . thus in Lacedemon and Crete the system of education and the greater part of the laws are framed with a view to war." Aristotle, Politics VII 2 §10.
"If a proposition be true, all the facts harmonize with it, but if it is false, it is soon found to be discordant with them." --Aristotle, Ethics
"[T]he British are sane rather than intellectual, i.e. they apply their intelligence directly to the situation in which they stand and thus they are able to gauge and apprehend the imponderables of politics in a way which no consistent political theory is able to do . . . .The Germans will always produce more interesting philosophy than the British. They explore the heights and depths of life more fully. . . .In Germany every social strategy is supported by a complete Weltanshauung or world view and every political attitude is developed into a religion. If they could only be as unintellectual, or even unintelligent, as the British, they might be a saner and certainly a happier people." Reinhold Niebuhr, The Germans Unhappy Philosophers in Politics (1933).
