The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

as to justify the sacrifice of everything else on their
behalf. The man who loses his life in the defence
of his country is not blamed if thereby his wife and
children are left penniless. The man who is
engaged in experiments with a view to some great
scientific discovery or invention is not blamed
afterwards for the poverty that he has made his
family endure, provided that his efforts are
crowned with ultimate success. If, however, he
never succeeds in making the discovery or the
invention that he was attempting, public opinion
condemns him as a crank, which seems unfair,
since no one in such an enterprise can be sure of
success in advance. During the first millennium of
the Christian era a man who abandoned his family
for a saintly life was praised, though nowadays it
would be held that he ought to make some
provision for them.
I think there is always some deep seated
psychological difference between the gormandiser
and the man of healthy appetite. The man in whom
one desire runs to excess at the expense of all