Albert Camus on Happiness

Re-posting, from August 2010:

https://corfublues.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/camus-on-happiness-encounter-march-1965.html

An additional definition of happiness, by Daphne du Maurier, from Chapter 2 of Rebecca:

"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind".


Thomas Hardy, from The Mayor of Casterbridge:

"In being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen...happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain".


Another comment, by Petros Abatzoglou (from What does Mrs Freeman Want, tr. Kay Cicellis):

"Don't give me this stupid word, 'happiness', a word we've discovered as the surest way to make ourselves unhappy".


Aristotle on Happiness


Dr. Johnson (Rasselas) on Happiness and Discontent, The Happy Valley

"To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the happy valley".


John Milton, from Paradise Lost, Book I:

"His doom
Reserved him to more wrath, for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him".


"But happiness can never be achieved. If we succeed in overcoming the force of circumstances, nature at once shifts the battle-ground, placing it within ourselves, and effects a gradual change in our hearts until they desire something other that what they are about to possess". Marcel Proust..


“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.” Marcel Proust.

An LBC Caller to the Matt Stadlen Show, giving his reasons for finding greater happiness in old age (24 February, 2019, c. 04.57 am):

"As you get older you get content with the misery - you become immune to it".

D.J.Enright on Happiness