Ultimately It Is The Desire Not The Desired That

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”

“Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it--else it is none.”

“When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind. For it is not continuous drinkings and revelings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit.”

“Love is a decision - not an emotion!”

“It is that we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.”

“The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.”