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Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.
Marquis De Sade
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Happiness is shaped by our perceptions and emotions rather than being a tangible state.

This quote by Marquis De Sade suggests that happiness is not a concrete entity but rather a concept influenced by our thoughts and feelings. It emphasizes that how we perceive and interpret our experiences plays a crucial role in determining our sense of happiness, indicating that it is subjective and can vary greatly from one individual to another.

Themes

HappinessImaginationPerceptionEmotionSubjectivity

In practice

Example use cases

During a mental health seminar, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of perspective in achieving happiness.

More from Marquis De Sade

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
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So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
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Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
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The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.
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Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
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Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.
Marquis De SadeRead

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It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.
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