Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
Interpretation
Unhappiness can lead to a sense of pride in one's suffering, similar to how those who struggle with sleep may boast about it.
Bertrand Russell suggests that unhappy individuals often take pride in their condition, much like those who experience insomnia might view their sleeplessness as a badge of honor. This highlights a human tendency to create an identity around discomfort, implying that acknowledging and accepting one's unhappiness can sometimes come with a sense of pride rather than a desire for change.
In practice
During a motivational talk about overcoming adversity, you might quote Russell to emphasize how pride can sometimes hinder our ability to seek help.
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.
What people see on court is another side of me; it's not me.
I realize that I'm black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody's wish.
Sometimes, I am also identified as a civil rights leader or a human rights activist. I would also like to be thought of as a complex, three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human being with a rich storehouse of experiences, much like everyone else, yet unique in my own way, much like everyone else.
In my judgment, the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell.
The interviewer should just tell me the words he wants me to say and Iβll repeat them after him. I think that would be so great because Iβm so empty I just canβt think of anything to say.
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.
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