Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men that comes chiefly through their work.
Interpretation
Having a clear goal or purpose contributes significantly to long-term happiness, primarily through engaging work.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of a continuous sense of purpose in achieving lasting happiness. He argues that, for most individuals, this sense of purpose is largely derived from their work, suggesting that meaningful engagement in one's professional life is key to overall fulfillment and joy.
In practice
During a motivational speech about finding joy in your career.
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.
Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.
Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.
These firecrackers outside and these lights outside cannot make you rejoice. They are only for children; for you, they are just a nuisance. But in your inner world there can be a continuity of lights, songs, joys. Always remember that society compensates you when it feels that the repressed may explode into a dangerous situation if it is not compensated. Society finds some way of allowing you to let out the repressed. But this is not true celebration, and it cannot be true.
Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life's deepest joy: true fulfillment.
These days, in our materialistic culture, many people are led to believe that money is the ultimate source of happiness. Consequently, when they donβt have enough of it they feel let down. Therefore, it is important to let people know that they have the source of contentment and happiness within themselves, and that it is related to nurturing our natural inner values.
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