It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.
What we are only now beginning to fully realize is that in seeking material pleasure too constantly, the capacity for enjoyment or fulfillment decreases and eventually becomes exhausted.
Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.
Years of happiness can be lost in the foolish gratification of a momentary desire for pleasure.
The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.