A Treatise on Parents and Children

Also it is important to put the happiness of the children rather / carefully in its place, which is really not a front place. The / unsympathetic, selfish, hard people who regard happiness as a very / exceptional indulgence to which children are by no means entitled, / though they may be allowed a very little of it on their birthdays or at / Christmas, are sometimes better parents in effect than those who imagine / that children are as capable of happiness as adults. Adults habitually / exaggerate their own capacity in that direction grossly; yet most adults / can stand an allowance of happiness that would be quite thrown away on / children. The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother / about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, / because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person / is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is / pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it. That is why it / is necessary to happiness that one should be tired. Music after dinner / is pleasant: music before breakfast is so unpleasant as to be clearly / unnatural. To people who are not overworked holidays are a nuisance. / To people who are, and who can afford them, they are a troublesome / necessity. A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.