Happiness

Happiness is negative: freedom from pain and measure

• Schopenhauer (schopenhauer) — happiness is negative, pain positive: the wise man's aim is freedom from pain, and limitation is the measure of happiness. Grounding: schaste-otritsatelno, tsel-svoboda-ot-boli, ogranichenie-mera-schastya.
• Epictetus (epictetus) — tranquillity is "the tranquil flow of life": wish the things which happen to be as they are, and nothing in the power of others can wound you. Grounding: nevozmutimost, hoti-chtoby-bylo-kak-est.
• Laozi (laozi) — the contentment of one who knows what is enough is the only lasting wealth; the extreme turns into its opposite. Grounding: zhizu, predel-i-mera.
• James Allen (james-allen) — serenity is the last lesson of culture, an earned self-mastery, not a mood. Grounding: serenity, spokojstvie-eta-vlast.

Happiness as active fullness and usefulness

• Goethe (goethe) — fullness lies in activity and in the limit: do the demand of the day, give your existence away in order to be. Grounding: trebovanie-dnya, put-deyatelnoy-zhizni, otrechenie.
• Franklin (franklin) — human felicity is made up of the little daily conveniences produced by industry and order. Grounding: human-felicity, metod-vmesto-poryva.
• Montaigne (montaigne) — life is its own trade: live by the common measure and know how to be present at your own life ("when I dance, I dance"). Grounding: iskusstvo-zhit, zhizn-sama-sebe-remeslo, zhivi-po-obshchey-mere.

Happiness as illusion or a false bearing

• La Rochefoucauld (larochefoucauld) — we are neither so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine: happiness is ruled by fortune and humour. Grounding: my-ne-tak-schastlivy-kak-voobrazhaem, fortuna-i-nastroenie-pravyat-mirom.
• Pascal (pascal) — the "happiness" of the busy is diversion, flight from oneself; rest without God is unbearable. Grounding: divertissement, nichtozhestvo-bez-boga.
• Tolstoy (tolstoy) — the arrest of life overtook him at the summit of prosperity: his circle's happiness was an intoxication with life, concealing the question "what for?". Grounding: ostanovka-na-vershine-blagopoluchiya, pyanstvo-zhizni.
• Rockefeller (rockefeller) — the frame is duty, not happiness: the man who has succeeded has brought corresponding obligations upon himself. Grounding: uspeh-nalagaet-obyazannosti, duty-of-wealth.
• Adler (adler) — repose is not a goal but a point on the line of upward movement; health is contribution to the common good, not a feeling of well-being. Grounding: zhizn-est-dvizhenie-vverkh, zdorove-est-vklad.

Axis of dispute: Schopenhauer against Goethe — freedom from pain against active
fullness; Pascal and Tolstoy against Franklin and Montaigne — prosperity as
flight against happiness as a craft; La Rochefoucauld against all projects of
happiness — fortune and humeur rule them.