If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Interpretation
Our happiness shouldn't depend solely on our external circumstances, or we may feel dissatisfied with life.
Bertrand Russell emphasizes that if we tie our happiness exclusively to our personal circumstances, we risk becoming disappointed with the reality of life, which may not always meet our expectations. He suggests that a broader perspective on happiness, one that is not solely dependent on external factors, is essential for a more fulfilling life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
One thing I am convinced more and more is true, and that is this: The only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.
Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.
You might not make it to the top, but if you are doing what you love, there is much more happiness there than being rich or famous.
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once.
Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.
When you are optimistic, when you are not complaining, when you look at the good side of your life, everybody loves you.
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