“Ages of happiness. - An age of happiness is quite impossible, because men want only to desire it but not to have it, and every individual who experiences good times learns to downright pray for misery and disquietude. The destiny of man is designed for happy moments - every life has them - but not for happy ages. Nonetheless they will remain fixed in the imagination of man as 'the other side of the hill' because they have been inherited from ages past: for the concepts of the age of happiness was no doubt acquired in primeval times from that condition of which, after violent exertion in hunting and warfare, man gives himself up to repose, stretches his limbs and hears the pinions of sleep rustling about him. It is a false conclusion if, in accordance with that ancient familiar experience, man imagines that, after whole ages of toil and deprivation, he can then partake of that condition of happiness correspondingly enhanced and protracted.”
“The good men of every age are those who go to the roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them.”
“God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.”
“Prejudice of the learned. – The learned judge correctly that people of all ages have believed they know what is good and evil, praise- and blameworthy. But it is a prejudice of the learned that we now know better than any other age.”
“But grant me from time to time—if there are divine goddesses in the realm beyond good and evil—grant me the sight, but one glance of something perfect, wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant, something still capable of arousing fear! Of a man who justifies man, of a complementary and redeeming lucky hit on the part of man for the sake of which one may still believe in man!”
“Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.”
“Prior to the Industrial Age and during the long Agri-cultural Age life was a matter of survival and the concept of 'happiness' was superfluous, but with the industrial age came 'leisure time' and thus happiness was something one had 'time' to pursue".~R. Alan Woods [2013]”