Some Bertrand Russell quotations have been floating around lately, so I read
The Conquest of Happiness, first published in 1930, and, boy, did I need this right now! The main ideas and some bits I liked are below by chapter. The book is really just a mix of Stoicism and Epicureanism, so you could just read that instead, but they're not nearly as palatable. This summary is really long, but not nearly as long as the book!
Part I: Causes of Unhappiness
1: What Makes People Unhappy?
This chapter has some racist bit, but I imagine he was still more progressive than most at the time. We won't throw the baby out with the bathwater at any rate. He raises his thesis here:
we can only be happy by being prudent with desires and by focusing outward.
