If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Interpretation
Our happiness shouldn't depend solely on our external circumstances, or we may feel dissatisfied with life.
Bertrand Russell emphasizes that if we tie our happiness exclusively to our personal circumstances, we risk becoming disappointed with the reality of life, which may not always meet our expectations. He suggests that a broader perspective on happiness, one that is not solely dependent on external factors, is essential for a more fulfilling life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
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.
The greatest source of unhappiness comes from inside.
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.
Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.
The master never seemed to have his fill of gazing at his firstborn child. "What do you want him to be when he grows up?" someone asked. "Outrageously happy," said the master.
You will never find a truly happy self-centered person. They simply don't exist.
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