Quotes from Francois Lelord

I didn't intend 'Hector' to be a self-help book when I first started writing. I wrote it as a little tale about a psychiatrist, like me, who sets off around the world in order to discover the vital ingredients for happiness.

Finding love is a fixation now, and that's because although romantic love can sometimes cause a lot of suffering, it can also give people peaks of happiness that come very close to our ideal of 'the happy state.'

Eros is not tranquil - it gives us spikes of happiness rather than a constant feeling of wellbeing. It's the love we feel at the beginning of a love affair and corresponds to the expression 'falling in love' since it is as involuntary an impulse as a physical fall.

Lesson no. 17: Happiness is caring about the happiness of those you love.

People fall in love more easily when they are already troubled by another emotion because we know that any intense emotional state greatly increases the risk of falling in love.

Knowing and feeling are two different things, and feeling is what counts.

Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.

The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!

Making comparisons can spoil your happiness.

Happiness often comes when least expected.

Many people see happiness only in their future.

Lesson no. 5: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story

We fall in love or stay in love with people who are unsuitable or who no longer love us and, conversely, we feel no love towards people who would be very suitable. Love is involuntary, that's the problem. Our personal histories prepare us to be attracted to people who unconsciously evoke emotions from our childhood or adolescence.

Lesson no. 17: Happiness is caring about the happiness of those you love.

Happiness is feeling useful to others.

Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.

Women are very complicated, even if you are a psychiatrist.

And since he was seeing more and more people who were unhappy for no apparent reason, he was becoming more and more tired, and even a little happy himself. He began to wonder whether he was in the right profession, whether he was happy with his life, whether he wasn't missing out on something. And then he felt very afraid because he wondered whether these unhappy people were contagious.

Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh?

But, in reality, being unhappy might also teach him something about happiness.

Be vary wary of people who declare that they're going to create heaven on earth, they almost invariably create hell.

Lesson no. 20: Happiness is a certain way of seeing things.

I'm old enough to ask myself that question, but not so old that I don't care what the answer is.

He who spends too long regretting his ruined crop will be neglect to plant next year's harvest.