Matthew Shea: God and Happiness (Cambridge Elements, 2024) – 1.1

Here Matthew Shea shares a number of quotes about happiness. My text is in white, Shea's text and text in brackets and ellipses and citations are in blue, and the text of other authors is in yellow.

 

Plato: [there is no] need to ask why a man desires happiness; the answer is already final. (1956: 205a)

Aristotle: Verbally there is very general agreement [about the final end and highest good of human life]; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and faring well with being happy. (1984: Bk. I, 1095a)

Cicero: The entire end and aim of philosophy is the attainment of happiness; and desire for happiness is the sole motive that has led men to engage in this study. (1931: 177)

Seneca: To live happily . . . is the desire of all men. (2007: 41)

Augustine: We all certainly desire to live happily; and there is no human being but assents to this statement almost before it is made. (1887b: Ch. 3)

Boethius: All anxieties of mortal men, driven on by the exertions of uncountably diverse pursuits, travel along paths that are, to be sure, quite different; yet they all strive to reach only one single goal: true happiness. (2001: Bk. III, Prose 2)
 

According to Anselm of Canterbury, the desire for happiness is a natural and inescapable inclination of the human will. (pg 1) 

Aquinas: man's last end is happiness, which all men desire | man must, of necessity, desire all, whatsoever he desires, for the last end (1920: I-II, q. 1, a. 8, 6)

Joseph Butler: Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness. (1983: 47)

Immanuel Kant: There is one end that can be presupposed as actual in all rational beings . . . and that is the purpose of happiness. (2012: 4, 415)

John Stuart Mill: Each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness . . . . [H]uman nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of happiness. (2001: 35, 39)

Pascal: All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of man, including those who go and hang themselves.

 

Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions . . . What else does this craving, and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself. (1995: No. 148)

 

Plato: A man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible . . . .[T]here are two patterns set up in reality. One is divine and supremely happy; the other has nothing of God in it and is the pattern of the deepest unhappiness. (1990: 176a5–e4)

Augustine: Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee. (2006: Bk. I, Ch. 1)

 

For sources, see: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/god-and-happiness/3AE254B4E1330CA1C8B2D8D68F79459B. 

I will add a quote from Nietzche. This is from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, near the end of the book, at the end of the Drunken Song (79): 

Nietzche: Oh man! Take heed of what the dark midnight says: I slept, I slept—from deep dreams I awoke: The world is deep—and more profound than day would have thought. Profound in her pain—Pleasure—more profound than pain of heart, Woe speaks; pass on. But all pleasure seeks eternity—a deep and profound eternity. 

Translation by Udo Middelmann, as quoted in How Should We Then Live? by Francis Schaeffer. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976. Page 169.

Another translation, by Thomas Common:

O man!
Take heed!
What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed?
“I slept my sleep—,”
“From deepest dream I’ve woke, and plead:—“
“The world is deep,”
“And deeper than the day could read.”
“Deep is its woe—,”
“Joy—deeper still than grief can be:”
“Woe saith: Hence! Go!”
“But joys all want eternity—,”
“—Want deep, profound eternity!”