
“If your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you're always going to be disappointed.”
The Power of Now (1997)
“If your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you're always going to be disappointed.”
“I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.”
J’ai été étonné du plaisir qu’on éprouve en faisant le bien.
Letter 21: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://www.cartage.org.lb/fr/themes/livreBiblioteques/Livres/Biblio(fr)/L/Lacl/Liaisonsdangereuses/lett21.htm
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)
Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"
Context: Every process which arises from our physical being and is related to it, is an event which lies outside of our volition. Every social process, however, arises from human intentions and human goal setting and occurs within the limits of our volition. Consequently, it is not subject to the concept of natural necessity. … We are here stating no prejudiced opinion, but merely an established fact. Every result of human purposiveness is of indisputable importance for man's social existence, but we should stop regarding social processes as deterministic manifestations of a necessary course of events. Such a view can only lead to the most erroneous conclusions and contribute to a fatal confusion in our understanding of historical events.
It is doubtless the task of the historian to trace the inner connection of historical events and to make clear their causes and effects, but he must not forget that these connections are of a sort quite different from those of natural physical events and must therefore have quite a different valuation.
“Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.”
Liberty Magazine : On complaints by frontier folks on his reforms.
“Pleasure may be snatched from life’s clenched fists, not joy”
Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)
"Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality" (1905), reprinted in "Essential Papers on Masochism" p.87, edited by Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly, New York University press, New York and London, (1995)
1900s