/lit/ - Literature

>>19888966
No book changes lives. If anything, it can inspire you to change your life. At the end of the day, you're the one in control.

Russian literature unironically made me give up on pursuing happiness. I now understand that I am an inherently miserable person, and nothing I can do will change that. Whether or not this is a good thing is up to you.

>>19888977
Happiness is an anglo invention. People back then struggled and lived to have a meal in their belly, to be clothed and under a roof, to survive not this pretentious faggotry of being 'happy', which is pure vanity.

>>19888986
>Happiness is an anglo invention.
You wot m8?
The English, the people who thought good food was too decadent of a luxury because it interrupted with the business of running an empire?

>>19888977
>>19888986
This is narcissism come from an economically well off Westerner. Off course happiness is possible, but don't expect it to always be yours or for it to be the constant goal in life.

>>19888977
Look up Transformation Mastery

>>19888966
There have been several,
"Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham, it's hard to explain but you only really "get" this book if you've had a hard, lonely, poverty stricken youth like i have and like the main character in the book. It made me feel less alone in the world and made me realise the real importance of taking my own life in my own hands, being responsible for my own happiness.
The passage where he is in the British Museum looking at ancient Greek tombstones and wondering what the point of life is, this is one of those passages i want to read again before i die, perhaps even have it read at my funeral. It is profound and beautiful.

>>19888990
>This is narcissism come from an economically well off Westerner.
The book of Ecclesiastes says the exact same thing.
>Off course happiness is possible
How so?

>>19888977
>>19888986

>t. Underground man

Just be happy lmao.

>>19888990
What is happiness?

>>19889005
>Just be happy lmao.
Unironically what my dad says. He literally yelled at me to stop being depressed because I have no reason to be depressed.

>>19888966
Another big one for me was "The Forsyte Saga" by John Galsworthy.
On the surface it's a Victorian family saga but really it's about the meaning of life. Some of the characters make money, property and social status the main goal of their lives, others choose love, beauty, art and happiness. The book shows the consequences of these choices. A truly brilliant and profound book. Should be more widely read.

>>19889022
Thanks for this rec, friend. I would've never know about this if it wasn't for your post. Will check it out.

Love by Stendhal
Today I wrote nothing by Kharms

>>19888990
>>19889005

>>19889029
Happiness is different to accomplishment. Blaise, more like gays

>>19889033
>Happiness is different to accomplishment.
Do you not feel happy when you accomplish something?

>>19889003
What I got out of this book is that if modern nerds were born a century ago, they'd spend all day reading and try to become artists or something like the protag. It's hard to remember much about this book besides him and Mildred, but the Bible quote at the end kinda gets me, even though it's not Maugham's own thing.
Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

>>19888966
Yeah

>>19889004
>The book of Ecclesiastes says the exact same thing.
Oh durr durr Tolstoy was so right all wise people were pessimists in history durr durr! But you're not living at the time of Ecclesiastes or in that religion. You are a comfortable modern man, if you're in a constant state of nihilism then so be it, but don't be so absurd as to deny happiness altogether.

Stfu, Tolstoy was documenting his own biographical state of mind, and if you bothered to take a look at the rest of Ecclesiastes (never mind the rest of the Testament), or even the second half of the Confession, you'd see pessimism was not the whole worldview or taken to be the answer.

>How so?
Don't expect me to believe you of all mortals have never felt happiness (especially considering the demographics of this time in history, and on this site), asking me what happiness is only boils down to a disingenuous question. Maybe you have a tragic life, but it's foolish to apply that as a metaphysical rule.

>>19889048
>You are a comfortable modern man, if you're in a constant state of nihilism then so be it, but don't be so absurd as to deny happiness altogether.

Just because I am comfortable doesn't mean I am happy. Look at all the rich and powerful people who do drugs and chest on their wives and drink themselves to death. Do you think they are doing that because they are happy?

>Don't expect me to believe you of all mortals have never felt happiness.
I do not believe that anyone in the history of the Earth has ever felt happiness. Contentment, sure, but not happiness. I am certain I am not happy and never have been.

The most important idea I've gotten from art is that strength isn't something you receive from others, it comes from within. Strength is when you've got nothing else to lose, when anyone could justify giving up, but you keep going ahead, blindly, stupidly, stubbornly, desperately, like an animal. Strength is not about easy victories. It's about being at absolute rock bottom and somehow, amazingly, miraculously, surviving the fall, and slowly inching your way back up.

>>19888966
pic related

watch this gospel video if you don't want to go to hell for your sins after you die. it's easy to be saved and get to heaven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOv_kvk4M8&t=1s

>>19889196
Retarded faggot

>>19888966
Every book I have read has changed me.

>>19889196
>OSAS
Faggot.

>>19888986
Indeed, happiness is for faggots. In the Renaissance depression was seen as the mark of the genius, especially among artists. I spend my days contentedly depressed in my room, painting and writing while the normies suffer with their struggle to be happy

>>19889566
>In the Renaissance depression was seen as the mark of the genius, especially among artists.
source?

No

>>19889569
https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2021/04/09/renaissance-melancholy-better-than-laughing/
Also wiki mentions it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia
>Painters were considered by Vasari and other writers to be especially prone to melancholy by the nature of their work, sometimes with good effects for their art in increased sensitivity and use of fantasy. Among those of his contemporaries so characterised by Vasari were Pontormo and Parmigianino, but he does not use the term of Michelangelo, who used it, perhaps not very seriously, of himself.

>>19888966
yes, personal investing books. i am financially independent because of them, which has changed my life a great deal

>>19889196
kinda based

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

>>19889196
>>19889635
Same retard

>>19889120
Which books express this idea best?

At first, but then the initial redpills wore off

>>19888966
Unironically Liber Novus. It gave me a new perspective on how to look at the religious experience as a phenomena. I also grasped the importance of divine madness and animalistic side of Christianity by reading it.
I think reading Jung can certainly be overdone, but taking his arguments seriously for a period of time is really worth it.

>>19888966
Yes, but considering it was the first actual book I ever read, that was only to be expected.

If this autist could will himself to succeed against immense opposition, so can I.

>>19888972
unless that book costs 100k bucks
then you can change two lives at once

>>19889048
What country are you from?

The good books were usually poisons in their time, when those biased pages were burned, those compliant authors jailed, and their ideas deemed diseases of the worst kind—corruptions of the spirit—to be fought with propaganda first, followed by prison, fire and firing squad, the gallows and the stake, all at the behest of the powers in place—majesties, Popes, czars, sultans, CEOs, and CIAs—the writers’ names made to stand for Machiavellian casts of character, Marxian acts of mischief, Humean disbelief, and not for the clear-eyed hard-boiled arguments, exposures, revelations, condemnations, and realities their works contained.

>>19889617
wat books