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.
You might not make it to the top, but if you are doing what you love, there is much more happiness there than being rich or famous.
I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man- Who could ask for anything more?
I am truly at my happiest not when I am writing an aria for an actor or making a grand political or social point. I am at my happiest when I've figured out a fun way for somebody to slip on a banana peel.
Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.
And when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.
The constant happiness is curiosity.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.