Sam Harris, Adventures in the Land of Illness http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/adventures-in-the-land-of-illness (May 26, 2014)
2010s
Source: The Last Book (1999), Ch.17 (In Russian, Последняя книга,1999, ISBN 5-8246-0030-9
“And then [Edward and I] continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever.”
Bella Cullen, p. 754
Twilight series, Breaking Dawn (2008)
Sam Harris, Taming the Mind http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/taming-the-mind (April 12, 2014)
2010s
Context: Your life doesn't get any better than your mind is: You might have wonderful friends, perfect health, a great career, and everything else you want, and you can still be miserable. The converse is also true: There are people who basically have nothing—who live in circumstances that you and I would do more or less anything to avoid—who are happier than we tend to be because of the character of their minds. Unfortunately, one glimpse of this truth is never enough. We have to be continually reminded of it.
“The worst illness of our time is that so many people have to suffer from never being loved.”
"Princess Diana Charity Work", Biography Online
Source: From the poem Li-Hawā An-Nufūsi http://www.almotanabbi.com/poemPage.do?poemId=248, Line 8
"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)
Context: A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak," "sinful" and anxious for a "good time." Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life.
“The man who does ill, ill must suffer too.”
Fragment 267 https://books.google.com/books?id=OxlHAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA233&dq=%22The+man+who+does+ill,+ill+must+suffer+too.%22 (trans. by Plumptre)
Jivamukti Yoga: Practices for Liberating Body and Soul, coauthored with David Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), p. 65 https://books.google.it/books?id=D_9oFtc1ZLMC&pg=PA65.
