My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
Marquis De SadeRead
Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Happiness is shaped by our perceptions and emotions rather than being a tangible state.
This quote by Marquis De Sade suggests that happiness is not a concrete entity but rather a concept influenced by our thoughts and feelings. It emphasizes that how we perceive and interpret our experiences plays a crucial role in determining our sense of happiness, indicating that it is subjective and can vary greatly from one individual to another.
Themes
HappinessImaginationPerceptionEmotionSubjectivity
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health seminar, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of perspective in achieving happiness.
More from Marquis De Sade
All quotes βSo long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Marquis De SadeRead
Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
Marquis De SadeRead
The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.
Marquis De SadeRead
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
Marquis De SadeRead
Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.
Marquis De SadeRead
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Charlie ChaplinRead
Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.
Henrik IbsenRead
But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
Haruki MurakamiRead
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.
Seneca The ElderRead
When you first get money, you buy all these things so no one thinks you're mean, and you spread it around. You get a chauffeur and you find yourself thrown around the back of this car and you think, I was happier when I had my own little car! I could drive myself!
Paul MccartneyRead
Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.
Thomas HardyRead