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The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.

— Bertrand Russell

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Happiness

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Often and often, a marriage hardly differs from prostitution except by being harder to escape from.

Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

A Free Man's Worship (1903)

My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

Greek Exercises (1888)

Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

Power: A New Social Analysis (1938)

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.

Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1918)

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The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously.

Tom Robbins High Times interview (2002)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy.

Spider Robinson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bertrand Russell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.