"We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy"
About this Quote
Happiness, Connolly implies, is less a prize for the clear-eyed than a private agreement with a useful lie. The provocation sits in that word "must": he isn’t gently suggesting optimism; he’s arguing that the psyche requires a chosen distortion the way the body requires sleep. Coming from a journalist-critic who made a career out of diagnosing cultural self-deceptions, the line lands as both confession and critique: even the people trained to sniff out illusion aren’t exempt from needing one.
The brilliance is the marriage of agency and surrender. "Select" frames illusion as a consumer choice, a modern act of self-curation. Yet "temperament" undercuts any fantasy of pure freedom. You don’t pick an illusion because it’s true; you pick it because it fits the shape of your nerves. Connolly smuggles in a bleak determinism: your happiness depends on finding the lie your personality can metabolize.
Then he sharpens the knife with "embrace it with passion". Half-belief won’t do. The subtext is that happiness requires performance, even to yourself. Passion isn’t evidence; it’s adhesive. The line also reads like an anti-Enlightenment manifesto for the disillusioned 20th century, an era when old certainties (religion, empire, progress) were cracking and new ones (ideology, consumer comfort, artistic vocation) rushed in to fill the gap.
Connolly’s intent isn’t to praise delusion so much as to expose the bargain at the heart of contentment: lucidity buys honesty, not peace. The question he leaves hanging is uncomfortable and modern: which illusion are you living on, and did you choose it or did it choose you?
The brilliance is the marriage of agency and surrender. "Select" frames illusion as a consumer choice, a modern act of self-curation. Yet "temperament" undercuts any fantasy of pure freedom. You don’t pick an illusion because it’s true; you pick it because it fits the shape of your nerves. Connolly smuggles in a bleak determinism: your happiness depends on finding the lie your personality can metabolize.
Then he sharpens the knife with "embrace it with passion". Half-belief won’t do. The subtext is that happiness requires performance, even to yourself. Passion isn’t evidence; it’s adhesive. The line also reads like an anti-Enlightenment manifesto for the disillusioned 20th century, an era when old certainties (religion, empire, progress) were cracking and new ones (ideology, consumer comfort, artistic vocation) rushed in to fill the gap.
Connolly’s intent isn’t to praise delusion so much as to expose the bargain at the heart of contentment: lucidity buys honesty, not peace. The question he leaves hanging is uncomfortable and modern: which illusion are you living on, and did you choose it or did it choose you?
Quote Details
| Topic | Happiness |
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