There is a strange reluctance on the part of most people to admit that they enjoy life.

Phelps points to a social and psychological inhibition: many people feel they must justify happiness, or fear that admitting enjoyment will seem naïve, complacent, or insensitive to suffering. The remark suggests that pleasure is often treated as morally suspect, while complaint and seriousness can function as badges of depth or virtue. Read this way, the quote is both observational and gently corrective: it invites candor about ordinary contentment and implies that enjoying life is not an embarrassment but a legitimate stance. In Phelps’s broader humanistic spirit, it also hints that literature and culture should enlarge, not diminish, one’s capacity for grateful living.