The Secret of Happiness 幸福的秘訣

The Secret of Happiness
幸福的秘訣

"The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile. The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible. The man who can forget his worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, gardening, or the life history of stars, will find that, when he returns from his excursion into the impersonal world, he has acquired a poise and calm which enable him to deal with his worries in the best way, and he will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness."

— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

“幸福的秘訣是：讓你的興趣盡可能廣泛，對你感興趣的事物和人的反應盡可能要友善而不是有敵意的。世界極為廣闊，而我們自己的力量有限。 如果我們所有的幸福都完全取決於個人的情況，那麼對生活的要求就很難不超過人生能給予的。要求過高必定讓我們的樂趣減少。人能夠通過研究自己真正感興趣的領域，例如園藝或恆星的生衰史，而把擔心拋諸腦後，會發現當他從遠足到非個人的世界回來時，他已經獲得了鎮定和平靜，使他能夠以最好的方式處理令他煩惱的事，他同時也有體驗到暫時但真正的幸福感。”

伯特蘭·羅素，英國哲學家、數學家和邏輯學家