Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed.
According
to my own experience, the highest level of inner calm comes from the
development of love and compassion. The more concerned we are with the
happiness of others, the more we increase our own well-being.
Friendliness and warmth towards others allow us to relax and help us to
dispel any sense of fear or insecurity so we can overcome whatever
obstacles we face.
The most important benefit of patience consists in the way it acts as a powerful antidote to the affliction of anger - the greatest threat to our inner peace, and therefore our happiness. The mind, or spirit, is not physical, it cannot be touched or harmed directly. Only negative thoughts and emotions can harm it. Therefore, only the corresponding positive quality can protect it.
If we develop concern for other people's welfare, share other people's
suffering, and help them, ultimately we will benefit. If we think only
of ourselves and forget about others, ultimately we will lose. The more
we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of
well-being becomes.
Personally, I experience the greatest degree of pleasure in having contact with works of art. They furnish me with happy feelings of an intensity that I cannot derive from other sources.
Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they'll find a means to be happy.
But how entirely I live in my imagination; how completely depend upon spurts of thought, coming as I walk, as I sit; things churning up in my mind and so making a perpetual pageant, which is to be my happiness.