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.
I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be.
It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available - more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don't have to run into the future in order to get more.
Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
I have never gone on a real trip, never taken a holiday. The best holiday for me is spent in my workshops when nearly everybody else is on vacation.
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