“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
Attributed to John Stuart Mill in The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, Vol. LXXXV (September 1887), p. 170
Disputed
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
John Stuart Mill 179
British philosopher and political economist 1806–1873Related quotes
Act 10, sc. 2
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
“All my moves were designed to promote the happiness and wellbeing of my family, rather than fame.”
As quoted in his obituary in The Times (11 July 2003) http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/Nuremberg/Times110703.html
“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. Vol. II, ch. 27.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)
“Sufficiently rich to satisfy all my desires and the reasonable desires of all those about me.”
Letter to James Mill, 1815, quoted in Newschool biography http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//profiles/ricardo.htm
Source: Wings of Fire, p. 38.
Translation source: Yuzuru Hanyu – World Championships 2021 ‘Day After’ Interview https://axelwithwings.com/2021/03/30/eng-translation-yuzuru-hanyu-world-championships-2021-day-after-interview-210328/ by Axel with Wings, published 28 March 2021. (Retrieved 31 March 2021)
Other quotes, 2021
Original: (ja) なんか限界だなって感じはないです。ただ、この限界だなって思うかもしれない時期をどうやって乗り越えていくか。
Source: Part 1 of the final interview at Worlds 2021 in Stockholm, as quoted in an article https://www.sponichi.co.jp/sports/news/2021/03/28/kiji/20210328s00079000616000c.html by Nippon Sports (Sponichi), published 28 March 2021. (Retrieved 31 March 2021)
Visions
Context: One Pentecost at dawn I had a vision. Matins were being sung in the church and I was there. And my heart and my veins and all my limbs trembled and shuddered with desire. And I was in such a state as I had been so many times before, so passionate and so terribly unnerved that I thought I should not satisfy my Lover and my Lover not fully gratify me, then I would have to desire while dying and die while desiring. At that time I was so terribly unnerved with passionate love and in such pain that I imagined all my limbs breaking one by one and all my veins were separately in tortuous pain. The state of desire in which I then was cannot be expressed by any words or any person that I know. And even that which I could say of it would be incomprehensible to all who hadn't confessed this love by means of acts of passion and who were not known by Love. This much I can say about it: I desired to consummate my Lover completely and to confess and to savour in the fullest extent--to fulfil his humanity blissfully with mine and to experience mine therein, and to be strong and perfect so that I in turn would satisfy him perfectly: to be purely and exclusively and completely virtuous in every virtue. And to that end I wished, inside me, that he would satisfy me with his Godhead in one spirit (1 Cor 6:17) and he shall be all he is without restraint. For above all gifts I could choose, I choose that I may give satisfaction in all great sufferings. For that is what it means to satisfy completely: to grow to being god with God. For it is suffering and pain, sorrow and being in great new grieving, and letting this all come and go without grief, and to taste nothing of it but sweet love and embraces and kisses. Thus I desired that God should be with me so that I should be fulfilled together with him.
Heathcliff (Ch. XXXIV).
Wuthering Heights (1847)