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

bear personal failure in his work, or the troubles of
an unhappy marriage, will also make it possible
for him to be patient when he misses a train or
drops his umbrella, in the mud. If he is of a fretful
disposition, I am not sure that anything less than
this will cure him.
The man who has become emancipated from the
empire of worry will find life a much more
cheerful affair than it used to be while he was
perpetually being irritated. Personal idiosyncrasies
of acquaintances, which formerly made him wish
to scream, will now seem merely amusing. When
Mr A. for the three hundred and forty-seventh time
relates the anecdote of the Bishop of Tierra del
Fuego, he amuses himself by noting the score, and
feels no inclination to attempt a vain diversion by
an anecdote of his own. When his bootlace breaks
just as he is in a hurry to catch an early morning
train, he reflects after the appropriate expletives,
that in the history of the cosmos the event in
question has no very great importance. When he is
interrupted in a proposal of marriage by a visit of a