Happiness Quote by Moliere

Joy, in Moliere's hands, is never just a clean, private sensation. Calling the thought of loved ones a "fine seasoning" tweaks the whole idea of happiness: it is something you compose, adjust, and improve, not something you passively receive. The metaphor matters. Seasoning is optional, deliberate, and almost invisible when it works well; it doesn't replace the meal, it sharpens it. Moliere is suggesting that pleasure becomes more vivid when it's tethered to relationship, when the self is interrupted by the presence of others.

There's also a sly social intelligence in the phrasing. To "think of those we love" is conspicuously modest compared to grander claims about devotion or sacrifice. It's not performative loyalty; it's an interior act that costs little and changes a lot. In a theatrical world crowded with vanity, hypocrisy, and the spectacle of feeling (Moliere's specialty), this is a quiet corrective: affection is not proven by rhetorical flourishes but by where your mind goes when you're happy.

The subtext is that joy can curdle into selfishness. Unseasoned, it risks becoming indulgence, a closed loop of pleasure that leaves no room for obligation or gratitude. By adding loved ones to the mental frame, you turn joy into something shareable, even if only in imagination. In 17th-century France, where status and etiquette often masqueraded as intimacy, Moliere offers a pragmatic ethic: the richest happiness is the kind that remembers its human dependencies.