The Wisdom of Life: What a Man Has, and What He Seems

“Epicurus, that great teacher of happiness, divided human needs into three classes.First come needs that are natural and necessary, such as food and clothing; if they are not met, they cause pain, but they are easy to satisfy.Second come needs that are natural but not necessary, such as the pleasures of the senses. Third come needs that are neither natural nor necessary: the desire for luxury, show and splendour, which never comes to an end.

There is no fixed amount of wealth that will satisfy a man. It always depends on the relation between what he wants and what he gets.A man never misses the things that it never occurs to him to ask for; he is just as happy without them. Another man, who has a hundred times as much, feels miserable because he lacks the one thing he wants.Riches, one may say, are like sea-water: the more you drink, the thirstier you become. And the same is true of fame.

Because of a strange weakness in human nature, people usually think far too much about the opinion others have of them, although a moment’s thought shows that this opinion is not essential to happiness.If you stroke a cat, it will purr; and just as surely, if you praise a man, a sweet look of delight will appear on his face, even if the praise is an obvious lie.And it is astonishing how easily a man is annoyed, and sometimes deeply hurt, by anything that wounds his sense of his own importance.

Most people value what others think above everything else, and care more about it than about what goes on in their own consciousness, which is the one thing truly present to them.They turn the natural order upside down, treating other people’s opinions as the real thing and their own existence as a mere shadow.We would add greatly to our happiness by seeing the simple truth that every man’s real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people’s opinions.Our health, temperament, abilities, income, family, friends and home are a hundred times more important for our happiness than what other people are pleased to think of us.Otherwise a man becomes the slave of what other people think, and how little it takes to upset or to soothe a mind that is greedy for praise!”