The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

People don't get to choose their family, but if you have the family you would choose - that's happiness.

However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative.

Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?

Your purpose is your why.

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?