QuoteProject
The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.
David Foster Wallace
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the importance of personal freedom in seeking one's own balance between pleasure and pain.

David Foster Wallace highlights the fundamental right of individuals to define and pursue their own vision of happiness, irrespective of societal norms. The idea that each person's quest for an optimal balance between pleasure and pain is 'utterly sacrosanct' suggests that this pursuit is sacred and paramount to the human experience, underscoring the value of personal autonomy and subjective well-being.

Themes

AutonomyPleasurePainHappinessFreedom

In practice

Example use cases

During a motivational speech about finding personal happiness.

More from David Foster Wallace

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
David Foster WallaceRead
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
David Foster WallaceRead
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
David Foster WallaceRead
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
David Foster WallaceRead
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead

Similar quotes

What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
It was the contemplation of God that created men who were equal, for it was in God that they were equal.
Antoine De Saint-ExuperyRead
The preachers commission is to declare the whole counsel of God; but the cross is the center of that counsel.
J. I. PackerRead
Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Terry PratchettRead
I don't go by my caste, creed or religion. My works speak for me.
Shashi TharoorRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.