A Quote by Nelson Rodrigues

Man finds happiness only in the superfluous. Under communism, he has only the essentials. How abominable and ridiculous!

Nelson Rodrigues

Quote Topics

Communism Essentials Finds Happiness How Man Only Ridiculous Superfluous

Quote Author

Nelson Rodrigues
Brazilian - Novelist
August 23, 1912 - December 21, 1980

The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man’s real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man’s search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end.

Ramana Maharshi

A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero,--the wise, the good, or the great man,--very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light.

Joseph Addison

Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.

Ayn Rand

But what was there to say? Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief. Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

Arundhati Roy

Dodge City is one town where the average bad man of the West not only finds his equal, but finds himself badly handicapped.

Andy Adams

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.

Peter Kreeft

Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The way of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning--the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life--a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

Jed Rubenfeld

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Happiness is a byproduct of helping others. No man ever finds happiness by thinking of himself. True happiness comes when we lose ourselves in the service of others – when we are merciful to our fellowmen.

Royden G. Derrick

This is my creed: Happiness is the only good; reason the only torch; justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Judge a man's character by what he finds ridiculous.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A man finds love and is satisfied. A woman finds love and insists on turning it into happiness.

Robert Breault

It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.

George Eliot

A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on.