The Conquest of Happiness (BR)

Ch 1

1. Unhapiness is largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics, mistaken habits of life destruction of the
natural zest and appetite for possible things upon which all happiness depends.
2. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more. This is due partly to
having discovered what were the things that I most desired and having gradually acquired many of these things. Partly it is
due to having successfully dismissed certain objects of desire such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge about
something or other as essentially unattainable. But very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself.
3. Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to centre my attention increasingly upon external
objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection. External interests, it is
true, bring each its own possibility of pain: the world may be plunged in war, knowledge in some direction may be hard to
achieve, friends may die. But pains of these kinds do not destroy the essential quality of life, as do those that spring from
disgust with self.
4. External discipline is the only road to happiness for those unfortunates whose self-absorption is too profound to be cured in
any other way.
5. Liberation from the tyranny of early beliefs and affections is the first step towards happiness for these victims of maternal
virtue.
6. There is no ultimate satisfaction in the cultivation of one element of human nature at the expense of all the others, nor in
viewing all the world as raw material for the magnificence of ones own ego.
7. The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this
one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite
undue emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it.
8. Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Ch 2

9. I do not myself think that there is any superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances
permit and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else
instead.
10. There is no arguing with a mood; it can be changed by some fortunate event, or by a change in our bodily condition, but it
cannot be changed by argument.
11. A rich man may, and often does, feel that all is vanity, but if he should happen to lose his money, he would feel that his next
meal was by no means vanity. The feeling is one born of a too easy satisfaction of natural needs. The human animal, like
others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life, and when by means of great wealth homo sapiens can gratify all
his whims without effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. The man
who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not
bring happiness. If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man
who has all he wants is still unhappy. He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of
happiness.
12. The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a
pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. Life is not to be conceived on the
analogy of a melodrama in which the hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are compensated
by a happy ending. I live and have my day, my son succeeds me and has his day, his son in turn succeeds him. What is there
in all this to make a tragedy about? On the contrary, if I lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their
savour. As it is, they remain perennially fresh.
13. love is to be valued because it enhances all the best pleasures, such as music, and sunrise in mountains, and the sea under
the full moon. A man who has never enjoyed beautiful things in the company of a woman whom he loved has not
experienced to the full the magic power of which such things are capable. Again, love is able to break down the hard shell
 of the ego, since it is a form of biological cooperation in which the emotions of each are necessary to the fulfilment of the
others instinctive purposes.
14. Man depends upon cooperation, and has been provided by nature, somewhat inadequately, it is true, with the instinctive
apparatus out of which the friendliness required for cooperation can spring. Love is the first and commonest form of
emotion leading to cooperation, and those who have experienced love with any intensity will not be content with a
philosophy that supposes their highest good to be independent of that of the person loved.
15. The cosmic significance of an individual death is lost to us because we have become democratic, not only in outward forms,
but in our inmost convictions.
16. To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say:
Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer
in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy all your
energies.

Ch 3

17. For my part, the thing that I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern
man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have
hitherto been his equals.
a. Moreover, money made is the accepted measure of brains. A man who makes a lot of money is a clever fellow; a
man who does not, is not.
18. The root of the trouble springs from too much emphasis upon competitive success as the main source of happiness.
19. As for the learned professions, no outsider can tell whether a doctor really knows much medicine, or whether a lawyer
really knows much law, and it is therefore easier to judge of their merit by the income to be inferred from their standard of
life.
20. The art of general conversation, for example, brought to perfection in the French salons of the eighteenth century, was still
a living tradition forty years ago.