A Quote by Alexander Pope

Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.

Alexander Pope

Quote Topics

Amusement Cannot Happiness Think Those

Quote Author

Alexander Pope
English - Poet
May 21, 1688 - May 30, 1744

Those who cannot think, have, in my opinion, a necessity (which goes very far towards creating a right) for amusement.

Sarah Josepha Hale

Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.

Aristotle

The tragedy of too many people is that they cannot allow happiness just to be there; they cannot leave it alone. Their sense of who they are and of what their destiny is cannot accommodate happiness. So they are drive to find ways to sabotage it.

Nathaniel Branden

I think the difference between finding happiness, or moments of happiness, is how you choose to interpret things. That's a rather shocking responsibility. That we're responsible for our own happiness. It's not those around us.

Natascha McElhone

To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.

Blaise Pascal

The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Samuel Johnson

The happiness of those who want to be popular depends on others; the happiness of those who seek pleasure fluctuates with moods outside their control; but the happiness of the wise grows out of their own free acts.

Marcus Aurelius

Those who can think, but cannot express what they think, place themselves at the level of those who cannot think.

Pericles

When I look at what the world does and where people nowadays believe they can find happiness, I am not sure that that is true happiness. The happiness of these ordinary people seems to consist in slavishly imitating the majority, as if this were their only choice. And yet they all believe they are happy. I cannot decide whether that is happiness or not. Is there such a thing as happiness?

Zhuangzi

I like to be depressing. I feel it's my duty to make everyone a little less happy. You know that line in the Declaration of Independence, "the pursuit of happiness"? I've come to think that it has no meaning at all. You cannot pursue happiness. And to think that this bad little sentence has determined our lives.

Jamaica Kincaid

Happiness is normally the prime search of every rational human being. One way to derive increasing happiness during the year we have just entered is to strive diligently to promote the happiness of others, to think of them first, yourself second. Happiness is the greatest tonic, the greatest elixir, of all. Worry is among the worst poisons. One sensible New Year resolution: I will do my utmost to have consideration for others, to exercise usefulness, to radiate happiness, to conquer worrying over things I cannot possibly remedy.

B. C. Forbes

I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.

Werner Herzog

Money cannot buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

Andre Gide

The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious and uptight about wanting things to go in the direction we think will bring happiness. We are always taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. The point is that the happiness we seek is already here and it will be found through relaxation and letting go rather than through struggle.

Pema Chodron

I think for me, happiness is crucial, but I think we think that happiness comes from amassing goods and getting things and being loved and being successful, when in fact my experience of happiness comes when you give everything away, when you serve people, when you're watching something you do make somebody happy, that's when happiness happens.