Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

In the absence of justice what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

Man is a credulous animal and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

White... is not a mere absence of colour it is a shining and affirmative thing as fierce as red as definite as black... God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously I had almost said so gaudily as when He paints in white.