“The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

“Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom”

“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”

“The role of boredom in human history is underrated.”

“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the human race to misery.”

“He is too blest that his own Happiness knows,
And Mortals to themselves are greatest Foes.”

“Without lies, humanity would perish of despair and boredom”

“Man has two sets of needs: his need as an animal to avoid pain and his need as a human to grow psychologically.”

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.”

“Envy hurt exponentially more than heartbreak because your soul was torn in two, half soaring with happiness for another person, half mired in a well of selfpity
and pain.”