“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out. Vol. II, ch. 27.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

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William Makepeace Thackeray69

novelist 1811–1863

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“Ah! Vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? — Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. II, ch. 27.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“God has filled our hearts with desires so vast and so magnificent that nothing in creation is capable of satisfying them. Thus it is that in the hope of finding some pleasure, we attach ourselves to created objects and that we have no sooner possessed and sampled that which we have so ardently desired than we turn to something else, hoping to find what we wanted. We are, then, through our own experience, constrained to admit that it is but useless for us to want to derive our happiness here below from transient things. If we hope to have any consolation in this world, it will only be by despising the things which are passing and which have no lasting value and in striving towards the noble and happy end for which God has created us. Do you want to be happy, my friends? Fix your eyes on Heaven; it is there that your hearts will find that which will satisfy them completely.”

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“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

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“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

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“The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.”

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“Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,…”

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“Do we have all the hatred and all the aversion for the world which Our Lord requires, and which his example must inspire in us?”

Louis Tronson (1622–1700) French Roman Catholic priest

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“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Attributed to John Stuart Mill in The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, Vol. LXXXV (September 1887), p. 170
Disputed

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

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William Makepeace Thackeray69

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