“Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.”

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Alexander Pope158

eighteenth century English poet 1688–1744

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; XXXIII
Lacon (1820)

“A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction. He does not really seek happiness, rather he seeks for a condition which matches his personal idea regarding the nature of happiness. But happiness is not a mere idea, for one idea will always have competition from another idea. The is why the unhappy man chases for ever from one attraction to another. Happiness will come when he stops chasing, that is, when he stops thinking that an idea about happiness is the same as happiness. A man enjoying the sunshine does so without analysing it.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge

“There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

“That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64-65
Leviathan (1651)

“Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 2

“There is no happiness without forgetfulness. I have never known a real man of action to be unhappy during action. How could he be? Like a child at play, he stops thinking of himself.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

“He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#105
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part VI

“Man enjoys the happiness he feels, woman the happiness she gives. This difference, so essential and yet so seldom noticed, has a marked difference on the whole of their respective behaviour. A man's pleasure is to satisfy desires, a woman's is chiefly to arouse them.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

L’homme jouit du bonheur qu’il ressent, et la femme de celui qu’elle procure. Cette différence, si essentielle et si peu remarquée, influe pourtant, d'une manière bien sensible, sur la totalité de leur conduite respective. Le plaisir de l’un est de satisfaire des désirs, celui de l’autre est surtout de les faire naître. <br class="br">Letter 130: Madame de Rosemonde to Madame la Présidente Tourvel. Trans. Richard Aldington (1924). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_130 <br class="br">Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

“That man is of supreme folly who always wants for fear of wanting; and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good things which he has with extreme labour acquired.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.”

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Alexander Pope158

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