“Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.”
Part II, Ch. I
The Possessed (1872)
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky155
Russian author 1821–1881Related quotes
“The idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.”
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Variant: No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Men
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“Whether happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure man possesses”
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice
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The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 10
Referenced
Variant: [H]appy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses[. ]
Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
"Birth" (1947), trans. Peter Dale Scott
Daylight (1953)
Context: He doesn't know birds live
In another time than man.
He doesn't know a tree lives
In another time than birds
And will grow slowly
Upward in a gray column
Thinking with its roots
Of the silver of underworld kingdoms.
“If a man doesn't know how to dance he doesn't know how to make love, there I said it!”
Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…