War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and never to be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one’s needs, and consequent freedom in the choice of one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man’s highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow-man when he wished to talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s needs—good food, cleanliness, and freedom—now that he was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is, of his way of life—now that that choice was so restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life—is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult, and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation.