There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness: is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase ''the pursuit of happiness'' is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.

Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell.

I am standing in the wings of a theatre waiting for my cue to go onstage. As I stand there I can hear the play proceeding, and suddenly it dawns on me that the…

The first thing I remember about the world:is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which is at once the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides th…

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain.

The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient; the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing: there is no pain as great as being alive, no burden heavie…