Happiness Quote by William S. Burroughs

Burroughs turns morality into mechanics, and the audacity is the point. “Virtue is simply happiness” kicks the legs out from under the usual Protestant scaffolding where virtue is sacrifice and happiness is suspicious. Then he tightens the vise: happiness isn’t a goal, it’s exhaust. A “by-product of function.” That phrasing is coldly industrial, like a factory spec sheet for the soul, and it’s doing quiet polemical work. If happiness comes from functioning, then virtue isn’t purity or obedience; it’s operational integrity.

The subtext is Burroughs’ lifelong argument with addiction, control, and the systems that claim to cure you by policing you. “Function” sounds like the language of doctors, institutions, and work culture: be productive, be stable, be normal. Burroughs borrows that vocabulary and rewires it into an ethic that’s less about being “good” than being unblocked. In a life shadowed by dependency and by the coercive “treatments” of mid-century America, the line reads like a heretical self-help mantra: stop chasing transcendence; get your circuitry working.

There’s also a sly jab at self-conscious happiness culture. If happiness is a by-product, you can’t manufacture it directly without breaking it, like trying to stare at your own pupils. Burroughs’ intent isn’t cheerfulness; it’s a grim clarity: the feeling you want arrives when your life is doing what it can do, not when you’re busy auditioning for virtue.