Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness?
Interpretation
Happiness is a balance between bliss and envy.
In this quote, Yevgeny Zamyatin suggests that happiness is a complex interplay between positive and negative emotions, where bliss represents the joy we experience and envy represents the discontent or longing for what others have. He implies that our sense of happiness is determined by how we manage these opposing feelings within us.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mental health.
The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (βA Story About The Most Important Thingβ)
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
The more we devote ourselves to the pursuit of holiness and happiness, the less likely we will be on a path to regrets.
It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn, - It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale.
You have no cause for anything but gratitude and joy.
When you find yourself ready to complain about what you don't have, stop for a moment to consider what incredible things you do have. And resolve to make the most of it all.
The more we think of others, the happier we are. The more we think of ourselves, the more suffering we feel.
That man lives happy and in command of himself, who from day to day can say I have lived. Whether clouds obscure, or the sun illumines the following day, that which is past is beyond recall.
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