In this passage, possibility is presented as more enduring than pleasure because it remains open to imagination. A pleasure that is actually experienced may prove less satisfying than expected, whereas an unrealised possibility can continue to attract precisely because its limits have not yet been tested. The contrast is therefore between possession and anticipation, rather than simply between happiness and disappointment.

The surrounding lines strengthen this idea by describing the “passion of possibility” as something intoxicating. Within Either/Or, this attitude belongs to the aesthetic outlook explored through the work’s pseudonymous voices, which often value novelty, potential and imaginative freedom. The remark captures both the attraction and the instability of such a way of living: possibilities can remain endlessly appealing because they need not confront reality, commitment or consequences. The passage therefore examines how desire can be sustained by what has not yet happened.

Full quotation

“If I were to wish for something, I would wish not for wealth or power but for the passion of possibility, for the eye, eternally young, eternally ardent, that sees possibility everywhere. Pleasure disappoints; possibility does not. And what wine is so sparkling, so fragrant, so intoxicating!”