Happiness Quote by William Cowper

Cowper frames life not as a gift basket of entitlements but as a contract written in invisible ink: you only understand the terms after youve already signed. "Existence is a strange bargain" sounds almost conversational, but it quietly detonates the Enlightenment-era faith that the world is legible, fair, and designed to reward virtue. The pivot that follows, "Life owes us little; we owe it everything", reverses the modern consumer posture toward happiness. Instead of treating life as a service that should deliver meaning on demand, Cowper casts it as an obligation that must be paid in full.

The subtext is theological without becoming preachy. Cowper, a deeply religious poet who wrestled with severe depression and spiritual dread, is allergic to the idea that happiness is something you can secure through comfort, status, or self-protection. If existence feels like a "bargain", its strangeness comes from the mismatch between what the self wants (assurance, ease, clarity) and what reality offers (limits, uncertainty, loss). The line reads like a reprimand to resentment: the universe is not your debtor.

Then he sharpens the knife: "The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose". Squandering is a deliberately scandalous verb, suggesting waste, extravagance, even moral risk. Cowper rehabilitates it as the antidote to inward-turned anxiety. Purpose, here, is not a branding exercise; its something large enough to justify self-expenditure. In a culture that prizes preservation and optimization, Cowper argues that the self becomes livable only when it is spent.