The Conquest of Happiness

by Bertrand Russell

The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another.

In the best kind of affection a man hopes for a new happiness rather than for escape from an old unhappiness.

the only sex relations that have real value are those in which there is no reticence and in which the whole personality of both becomes merged in a new collective personality. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps most fatal to true happiness.

The power to produce great art is very often, though by no means always, associated with a temperamental unhappiness, so great that but for the joy which the artist derives from his work, he would be driven to suicide.

Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect.

The habit of viewing life as a whole is an essential part both of wisdom and of true morality,

The man who can forget his work when it is over and not remember it until it begins again the next day is likely to do his work far better than the man who worries about it throughout the intervening hours.

However important a worry may be, it should not be thought about throughout the whole of the waking hours.

The world is full of things that are tragic or comic, heroic or bizarre or surprising, and those who fail to be interested in the spectacle that it offers are forgoing one of the privileges that life has to offer.

In emancipation from the fears that beset the salve of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man.

The wise man, though he will not sit down under preventable misfortunes, will not waste time and emotion upon such as are unavoidable, and even such as are in themselves avoidable he will submit to if the time and labor required to avoid them would interfere with the pursuit of some more important object.

Even in the pursuit of really important objects, it is unwise to become so deeply involved emotionally that the thought of possible failure becomes a constant menace to peace of mind.

Worry and fret and irritation are emotions which serve no purpose.

The man who has become emancipated from the empire of worry will find life a much more cheerful affair than it used to be while he was perpetually being irritated.

The best cure is to have not only one picture, but a whole gallery, and to select the one appropriate to the incident in question.

A little time spent in learning to appreciate facts is not time wasted, and the work that will be done afterwards is far less likely to be harmful than the work done by those who need a continual inflation of their ego as a stimulant to their energy.

A certain kind of resignation is involved in willingness to face the truth about ourselves; this kind, though it may involve pain in the first moments, affords ultimately a protection—indeed the only possible protection—against the disappointments and disillusionments to which the self-deceiver is liable.

The effects of an act upon the agent will be widely different, according to his state of mind at the moment.

Undoubtedly we should desire the happiness of those whom we love, but not as an alternative to our own.

Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him.