The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
Interpretation
Happiness stems from having a clear conscience and being at peace with oneself.
In this quote, Edward Gibbon emphasizes that the foundation of true happiness lies in maintaining a clear conscience. When one acts with integrity and honesty, free of guilt or moral dilemmas, they achieve a state of emotional and mental clarity that allows for genuine happiness. This suggests that our inner moral state significantly impacts our overall sense of well-being.
In practice
In a speech about personal values, one might say, 'As Edward Gibbon stated, the first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.'
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
Being happy is of the utmost importance. Success in anything is through happiness.
The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others.
The ultimate source of a happy life is warm-heartedness. This means extending to others the kind of concern we have for ourselves. On a simple level we find that if we have a compassionate heart we naturally have more friends. And scientists today are discovering that while anger and hatred eat into our immune system, warm-heartedness and compassion are good for our health.
Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
We should enjoy food and have fun. It is one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life.
I caught the happy virus last night_x000D_ When I was out singing beneath the stars._x000D_ It is remarkably contagious - _x000D_ So kiss me.
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