"I don't agree that the great majority of people in the world are sad"
I didn't say the "great" majority. I said most people are in sad straits...as did Jewels. It is a sad world because ALL people suffer and there is little surcease for many. And there is nothing happy about suffering unless you are a severely damaged individual. When Jewels said it was a sad world, I am sure he meant that he was capable of acknowledging the overwhelming suffering which exists for real people. He was not talking about troubled adolescents who adopt "blue sky" thinking and retreat into denial or even psychosis...
"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults."
Thomas Szasz
"Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak."
J. August Strindberg
"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar before-hand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life."
Jane Austen
"Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste."
Logan Pearsall Smith
"For many people (and eventually for all) life is a relentless onslaught of physical, emotional, and intellectual pain. They are the rare who can ignore their body, their feelings, and their mind. And those who do so have not lived. They have merely hid."
Attributed to Solon... |
