“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”

— Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973), "Emotions", p. 36

About Thomas Szasz

1920 – 2012

Hungarian-American psychiatrist and author of "The Myth of Mental Illness".

“The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.”

“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”

“Anxiety is the unwillingness to play even when you know the odds are for you.”

“It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

“Ye are better than all the ballads that ever were sung or said; for ye are living poems, and all the rest are dead.”

“The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.”

“Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; thus unlamented let me die; steal from the world, and not a stone tell where I lie.”

“Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.”