“Again, in regard to actual human existence, I have found myself giving honour to those who feel its tragedy, who think truly about Death, who are oppressed by ignoble things even when they are inevitable; yet these qualities appear to me to militate against happiness, not only to the possessors, but to all whom they affect. And, generally, the best life seems to me one which thinks truly and feels greatly about human things, and which, in addition, contemplates the world of beauty and of abstract truths. This last is, perhaps, my most anti-utilitarian opinion: I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist – all that is commonly called Science – to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made.
[Utilitarians] have been strangely anxious to prove that the life of the pig is not happier than that of the philosopher – a most dubious proposition…”

— Bertrand Russell

Letter to Gilbert Murray, April 3, 1902
1900s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

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Bertrand Russell 562

logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

Titon Rahmawan

#happiness

“Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood — all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Letter to Anne, Countess of Ossory, (16 August 1776)
A favourite saying of Walpole's, it is repeated in other of his letters, and might be derived from a similar statement attributed to Jean de La Bruyère, though unsourced: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think". An earlier form occurs in another published letter:
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel — a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (31 December 1769)
Variant: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

Source: I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight

“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

Jean Racine (1639–1699) French dramatist

“Life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.”

Jean de La Bruyère (1645–1696) 17th-century French writer and philosopher

La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense.
As quoted in Selected Thoughts from the French: XV Century-XX Century, with English Translations (1913), pp. 132-133, by James Raymond Solly. This may conceivably be a misattribution, because as yet no definite citation of a specific work by La Bruyère has been located, and the statement is very similar to one known to have been made by Horace Walpole in a letter of 31 December 1769: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.

“All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which truly it is difficult to understand how any one who possesses much of both, can fail to do. None but those who do not care about opinions, will confound it with intolerance. Those, who having opinions which they hold to be immensely important, and their contraries to be prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general good, will necessarily dislike, as a class and in the abstract, those who think wrong what they think right, and right what they think wrong: though they need not therefore be, nor was my father, insensible to good qualities in an opponent, nor governed in their estimation of individuals by one general presumption, instead of by the whole of their character.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/50/mode/1up pp. 50-51

“If i were to think of one thing i like about myself it'd be my confidence which taught me never to give up in life.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Original: What's your?

“Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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