If This Is a Man (1947)
Context: Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition, which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.
Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
“But sooner or later, no matter who you are, life uses everyone as its whipping boy.”
Source: Born of Silence
“Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's.”
"The Country of Elusion" in The Trimmed Lamp http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/8tlmp11h.htm (1907)
“Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.”
The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933)
#happiness
“Implement now, perfect later.”
It's Called Work for a Reason (2007)
Sam Harris, Adventures in the Land of Illness http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/adventures-in-the-land-of-illness (May 26, 2014)
2010s
Life and Human Nature.
Afterthoughts (1931)
