@ideas

I am selecting a short story for our next book club meeting, in Montenegro but also online, welcome to join if this sounds interesting, here is a little excerpt on conditions of Happiness from Edgar Allan Poe that we will most likely read He admitted but four elementary principles, or, more strictly, conditions, of bliss. That which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. “The health,” he said, “attainable by other means is scarcely worth the [column 2:] name.” He instanced the ecstacies [[ecstasies]] of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered happier than others. His second condition was the love of woman. His third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent of attainable happiness was in proportion to the spirituality of this objec

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