Duty and joy go hand in hand. Duty is there so you can continue to pursue your happiness. And joy is there so that you have something real to fight for.

Star Trek: Discovery, s03e07, written by Kirsten Beyer [Amazon, Paramount+]

Hermetic quote Beyer Star Trek Discovery duty and joy go hand in hand

Consider also:

  1. “If only a man could found a ‘Famous Authors Film Producing Company’ and give the authors a fair chance and a free hand, and then employ real artists for the costumes,–a real tailor for the men’s clothes;–real decorators for the indoor sets; real ladies to look after the manners of the actors, and real architects to design the houses, he would be able to take up the whole of Liberty Loan out of his first year’s profits.”
  2. “It is necessary in many circumstances to fight; and, in order to fight well, one needs certain quite definite qualities. In olden days I did a good deal of fencing, by which I do not mean receiving stolen goods. I mean the play of rapier and small-sword. I learned that I must be entirely concentrated on the business on hand, and that elaborate arguments purporting to prove that my opponent was a Chinaman or a heretic, were out of place.”
  3. “Dogmatization is the opposite of routinization, in which spiritual realities are affirmed so strongly that it becomes a duty that must be done for others, humanity, the environment, but never for one’s self. The idea of growth becomes simply another goal on a long list of goals, and the genuine joy it offers is lost in its metamorphosis into duty. (Geburah/Mars)”
  4. Riches she possessed, but that which enriches them, the participation of affection, was wanting. All that they could purchase for her became indifferent to her, because that which they could not purchase, and which was more valuable than themselves, she had, for their sake, thrown away. She discovered, when it was too late, that she had mistaken the means for the end—that riches, rightly used, are instruments of happiness, but are not in themselves happiness.
  5. “And yet it is not for the happiness of others, but for personal happiness, that one embraces the ethics of Epicurus. We should find some distance from the incessant urgings of desire for our own psychic health.”