To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Interpretation
True happiness often comes from appreciating what you have rather than just focusing on what you desire.
Bertrand Russell's quote suggests that longing for certain desires can lead to discontent, but learning to find joy in what you already possess is essential for achieving true happiness. It emphasizes the importance of acceptance and gratitude in our lives, indicating that a sense of fulfillment can be found even when we lack certain things we wish for.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about finding joy in the present moment.
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 can make yourself happy or miserable - it's the same amount of effort.
There are seeds of happiness planted in every human soul. Our mental attitude and disposition constitute the environment in which these seeds may germinate.
The times in my life when I have been most happy haven't been the times when I have had the most money or the most freedom or the most anything, but rather when I've been in love or in community or right with people.
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Do not forget that even as "to work is to worship" so to be cheery is to worship also, and to be happy is the first step to being pious.
It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when youβd eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did. (268)
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