The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Interpretation
True happiness comes from accepting the world's imperfections.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that rather than living in denial about the hardships and unpleasant realities of life, one can find genuine happiness by acknowledging these truths. Accepting that the world has its flaws allows individuals to cultivate a more profound sense of contentment and resilience against adversity.
In practice
During a motivational speech about resilience, this quote could be used to inspire acceptance of life's challenges.
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.
For me happiness occurs arbitrarily: a moment of eye contact on a bus, where all at once you fall in love; or a frozen second in a park where it's enough that there are trees in the world.
Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth... Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it. .
Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower and draws all good things towards you.
Don't drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life.
Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.
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