“The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”

version in original Flemish (citaat van Roger Raveel, in het Vlaams): Het verschrikkelijke mooie leven.
title of his painting / installation - including birdcage and two living canaries, Raveel made in 1965 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1960's

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter I, Money, p. 4

C'est double plaisir de tromper le trompeur.
Book II (1668), fable 15 (The Cock and the Fox).
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Original: (it) L'esser felice, uno stato d'animo di benessere interiore che disturba terribilmente chi non lo è.
Source: prevale.net

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

I Am the Only Being (1836)
Source: Wuthering Heights
Context: I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no eye would mourn
I never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born
In secret pleasure — secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away
As friendless after eighteen years
As lone as on my natal day

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)
Context: I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

Book X: The Pope.<!-- line 1235 -->
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)