Book : Conquest of Happiness

Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872 - Feb 2, 1970)
was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic.

Johannes Vermeer 

• Cause of Unhappiness 

Byronic Unhappiness

It is common in our day, as it has been in many other periods of the world's history, to suppose that those among us who are wise have seen through all the enthusiasms of earlier times and have become aware that there is nothing left to live for. The men who hold this view are genuinely unhappy, but they are proud of their unhappiness, which they attribute to the nature of the universe and consider to be the only rational attitude for an enlightened man. Their pride in their unhappiness makes less sophisticated people suspicious of its genuineness; they think that the man who enjoys being miserable is not miserable.

• Cause of Happiness 

The happy man is the man who does not suffer from either of these failures of unity, whose personality is neither divided against itself nor pitted against the world. Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found.


내가 느끼고 있는 불행과 행복은 어떤 것일까?
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저자는 너무 감정에 휘둘리지 말고 마음속 깊은 곳의 본능을 쫓아서 강물처럼 흘러가는 삶에 충분히 몸을 맡길 때, 우리는 가장 큰 행복을 발견할 수 있다고 말하고 있다.