Happiness

"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"

"Long and tedious reflection cannot enable us to shape our decisions and attitudes properly; only that definite and clear instruction which we gain can form a direct inner link to God. This instruction alone is able to give us the inner firmness and lasting peace of mind which must be regarded as the highest boon in life. And if we ascribe to God, in addition to His omnipotence and omniscience, also the attributes of goodness and love, recourse to Him produces an increased feeling of safety and happiness in the human being thirsting for solace. Against this conception not even the slightest objection can be raised from the point of natural science, for as we pointed it out before, questions of ethics are entirely outside of its realm."

"These experiences are not religious in the ordinary sense. They are natural, and can be studied naturally. They are not ineffable in the sense the sense of incommunicable by language. Maslow also came to believe that they are far commoner than one might expect, that many people tend to suppress them, to ignore them, and certain people seem actually afraid of them, as if they were somehow feminine, illogical, dangerous. One sees such attitudes more often in engineers, in mathematicians, in analytic philosophers, in book keepers and accountants, and generally in obsessional people. The tends to be a kind of bubbling-over of delight, a moment of pure happiness. For instance, a young mother scurrying around her kitchen and getting breakfast for her husband and young children. The sun was streaming in, the children clean and nicely dressed, were chattering as they ate. The husband was casually playing with the children: but as she looked at them she was suddenly so overwhelmed with their beauty and her great love for them, and her feeling of good fortune, that she went into a peak experience . . ."

"My friends, I tell you that hitherto you have been prevented from even knowing what happiness really is, solely in consequence of the errors — gross errors — that have been combined with the fundamental notions of every religion that has hitherto been taught to men. And, in consequence, they have made man the most inconsistent, and the most miserable being in existence. By the errors of these systems he has been made a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic or a miserable hypocrite; and should these qualities be carried, not only into the projected villages, but into Paradise itself, a Paradise would no longer be found!"

"God created pain and grief for this purpose, To wit, to manifest happiness by its opposites. Hidden things are manifested by their opposites, But as God has no opposite, He remains hidden, God’s light has no opposite in the range of creation Whereby it may be manifested to view, Perforce ‘Our eyes see Him not, though He sees us,’ Behold this in the case of Moses and Mount Sinai."

"The execution of the former Iraqi president is the work of Iraqs government. We wish the Iraqi people prosperity, happiness and success. Eid is the day of happiness, the day of goodness, the day of reconciliation, not the day of revenge."

"I said in my heart: I will go, and abound with delights, and enjoy good things. And I saw that this also was vanity."

"Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more."

"[T]hink of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself."

"Well, I am reading more and enjoying it less—[laughter]—and so on, but I have not complained nor do I plan to make any general complaints. I read and talk to myself about it, but I dont plan to issue any general statement on the press. I think that they are doing their task, as a critical branch, the fourth estate. And I am attempting to do mine. And we are going to live together for a period, and then go our separate ways. [Laughter]."

"They stared at her curiously and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn’t hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit grimly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range—and with a coup to plan for at the end."

"Forsake the use of violence on defence of reason. Remember, horses are unique with minds of their own and need to be related to as such if we are ever to have enjoyable and productive relationship with them."

"As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolizes all new inventions, every new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and happiness of all, causes, on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of wages for others and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat."

"I set out to make a brutal authoritarian dictatorship because it makes my balls feel big. So all my workplaces were things like Thought Police Headquarters, and all the venues were propaganda theatres, and most of the gormless fuckers were still content or elated. Christ, this must be how Nazi Germany started!"

"I came to philosophy finally phrased as "0.8 is enough". … If I had a way to rate happiness, I think its a good design to have an organism thats happy about 80% of the time. If it was 100% of the time, it would be like everybodys on drugs and everything collapses and nothing works because everybody is just too happy. … There are times when I am down and I know that Ive actually been programmed to be depressed a certain amount of time."

"One prominent Muslim who suffered for The Satanic Verses, notably for protesting against the ban, was Mushir-ul-Hasan, pro-vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, the Muslim university of Delhi. He told an interviewer: "I think the ban should be lifted. I think every person has a right to be heard and to be read." In his view, the ban "qualifies as an indefensible move," though he took care to deny any sympathy for the books contents. Overnight, he became the object of a vicious campaign by most students and some professors at Jamia Millia. Though he buckled, apologizing and saying he never meant to demand the lifting of the ban, he had to stay away from his own university. The day he showed up again, he was severely beaten up and had to be hospitalized. ... Violence most directly related to Rushdie several attacks on his translators. Two of them, the Italian Ettore Capriolo and the Norwegian William Nygaard, were seriously wounded in knife assaults. (In defiance, Nygaard declared at the 1994 Book Fair in Frankfurt that the only correct reply to the terrorists was to stand firm for freedom, and that his way to do this was to translate and publish yet another blasphemers book, Taslima Nasrins Shame.) More alarming yet was the lethal attack on Hitoshi Igarashi, a Japanese professor of literature and translator of The Satanic Verses, right on the campus of Tsukuba University in 1991. To the indignation of the Japanese public, Japanese Muslims applauded this killing and declared that "even if the murder was not committed by a Muslim, God made sure that Igarashi got what he deserved."

"Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of ones living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly."

"I drifted off thinking about happiness, birth, new life. But now I was haunted by a vision of — he was horrible! — a lone biker of the apocalypse; a man with all the powers of hell at his command. He turned day into night and laid to waste everything in his path. He was especially hard on the little things, the helpless and the gentle creatures. He left a scorched earth in his wake, befouling even the sweet desert breeze which crossed his brow. I didnt know where he came from or why. I didnt know if he was dream or vision, but I feared that I myself had unleashed him. He was the fury that would be as soon as Florence Arizona found her little Nathan gone!"

"4 Kalki 17:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC) but extended thus: "We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break."

"TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Thus the habit of loving someone is nothing other than BENEVOLENCE by which we want the good of others, not for the profit that we gain from it, but because it is agreeable to us in itself. CHARITY is a general benevolence. And JUSTICE is charity in accordance with wisdom. … so that one does not do harm to someone without necessity, and that one does as much good as one can, but especially where it is best employed."