Daniel Gilbert

When we have an experience–hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room–on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time.

time and variety are two ways to avoid habituation, and if you have one, then you don’t need the other. In fact when episodes are sufficiently separated in time, variety is not only unnecessary–it can actually be costly.

(a) value is determined by the comparison of one thing with another; (b) there is more than one kind of comparison we can make in any given instance; and (c) we may value something more highly when we make one kind of comparison than when we make a different kind of comparison.