To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Être bête, égoïste et avoir une bonne santé, voilà les trois conditions voulues pour être heureux. Mais si la première vous manque, tout est perdu.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, August 02, 2013
Three Requirements for Happiness
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), letter to Louise Colet (August 13, 1846), tr. Francis Steegmuller: