[on the fear of a nervous breakdown] I don't think I ever lost this fear. It turned me into a default existentialist by the time I was six: I quickly learned that the pursuit of happiness is largely pointless, happiness being the only target one merely has to aim at in order to miss. (John Cooper Clarke)

[on the fear of a nervous breakdown] I don't think I ever lost this fear. It turned me into a default existentialist by the time I was six: I quickly learned that the pursuit of happiness is largely pointless, happiness being the only target one merely has to aim at in order to miss.

John Cooper Clarke

Related topics

aim breakdown default fear happiness lost miss order pursuit six target think time existentialist

Related quotes

Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one's stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.

Boris Pasternak

There is no fulfillment in things whatsoever. And I think one of the reasons that depression reigns supreme amongst the rich and famous is some of them thought that maybe those things would bring them happiness. But what, in fact, does is having a cause, having a passion. And that's really what gives life's true meaning.

Ben Carson

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

Denis Diderot

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

Hannah Arendt

The chief end of our life is to live in communion with God. To this end the Son of God became incarnate, in order to return us to this divine communion, which was lost by the fall into sin. Through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we enter into communion with the Father and thus attain our purpose.

Theophan the Recluse