Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.
Pleasures seem solid in their pursuit; but are mere clouds in the enjoyment.
In so far as the culture industry arouses a feeling of well-being that the world is precisely in that order suggested by the culture industry, the substitute gratification which it prepares for human beings cheats them out of the same happiness which it deceitfully projects.
I always find that nostalgia is sort of like memory without the pain. And that's why it feels so good to kind of bask in that, and I think it can be deceptively comforting.
He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.
Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.
False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.
Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.
Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow's bliss.
Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation.
