'But what is this?' he murmured. 'Why, Esther, you're crying now!'
'Oh, it's nothing - it's only too much happiness - and the wish,' sobbed she, 'that our dear Helen were as happy as ourselves.'
--
Frederick and Esther (Ch. LI : An Unexpected Occurence)Anne Bronte
Don’t allow man to be happy. Happiness is self contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy of living. Take away from them whatever is dear or important to them. Never let them have what they want [….]Unhappy men will come to you. They’ll need you. They’ll come to you for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man’s soul-and the space is yours to fill.
Ayn Rand
Helen whose face was fatal must have wept
Many salt tears to keep her eyes so bright
Many long nights alone: and every night
Men died, she cried, and happy Paris kept
Sweet Helen.T. H. (Terence Hanbury) White
Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed,
His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared.
His mother stood apart. No other looked
into her secret eyes. Nobody dared.
— 1940-1943Anna Akhmatova
Be kind, Helen, I am so tired of thinking;
There are so many difficult corridors of thought,
With equal iron banisters leading back again:
So many stone stairs, Helen, up which I sought
To rediscover the windy sky, and stand, blinking,
In the lost sunlight: as bright as pain,
Helen. I would give almost anything now
Even for pain.T. H. (Terence Hanbury) White
A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction. He does not really seek happiness, rather he seeks for a condition which matches his personal idea regarding the nature of happiness. But happiness is not a mere idea, for one idea will always have competition from another idea. The is why the unhappy man chases for ever from one attraction to another. Happiness will come when he stops chasing, that is, when he stops thinking that an idea about happiness is the same as happiness. A man enjoying the sunshine does so without analysing it.
Vernon Howard
Bronte, Anne
Bronte, Branwell
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