The conquest of happiness

Animals are happy so long as they have health and enough to eat. Human beings, one feels, ought to be, but in the modern world they are not, at least in a great majority of case...

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 earlie...

If you ask any man in America, or any man in business in England, what it is that most interferes with his enjoyment of existence, he will say: “The struggle for life.” He will...

Boredom as a factor in human behaviour has received, in my opinion, far less attention than it deserves. It has been, I believe, one of the great motive powers throughout the hi...

Fatigue is of many sorts, some of which are a much graver obstacle to happiness than others. Purely physical fatigue, provided it is not excessive, tends if anything to be a cau...

Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy. Envy is, I should say, one of the most universal and deep-seated of human passions. It is very notic...

Concerning the sense of sin we have already in Chapter I had occasion to say something, but we must now go into it more fully, since it is one of the most important of the under...

In its more extreme forms persecution mania is a recognized form of insanity. Some people imagine that others wish to kill them, or imprison them, or to do them some other grave...

Very few people can be happy unless on the whole their way of life and their outlook on the world is approved by those with whom they have social relations, and more especially...

So far we have been considering the unhappy man; we now have the pleasanter task of considering the happy man. From the conversation and the books of some of my friends I have b...

Perhaps the best way to understand what is meant by zest will be to consider the different ways in which men behave when they sit down to a meal. There are those to whom a meal...

One of the chief causes of lack of zest is the feeling that one is unloved, whereas conversely the feeling of being loved promotes zest more than anything else does. A man may h...

Of all the institutions that have come down to us from the past none is in the present day so disorganized and derailed as the family. Affection of parents for children and of c...

Whether work should be placed among the causes of happiness or among the causes of unhappiness may perhaps be regarded as a doubtful question. There is certainly much work which...

In this chapter I wish to consider not those major interests about which a man’s life is built, but those minor interests which fill his leisure and afford relaxation from the t...

The golden mean is an uninteresting doctrine, and I can remember when I was young rejecting it with scorn and indignation, since in those days it was heroic extremes that I admi...

Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself. We have been concerned in this volume with the part which depends upon oneself, and...