Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine

by Derren Brown

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’6

This exceptio, or reserve clause, is another manifestation of the distinction between what we do and do not control. It is simply the mental addition of the thought, ‘If nothing happens to the contrary’ to the end of any statement concerning our intentions.

In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way – and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.57

‘What terrifies most about death is not the loss of the future but the loss of the past. In fact, the act of forgetting

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier.