Quotes About Happiness

There's an imp inside me, and if I don't let him out to make some mischief now and then, the world just gets too damned dull. I hate feeling grumpy and bored. I'm an enthusiast, and the more dangerous my life becomes, the happier I am.

That's how it is with want. As long as you lack something, you yearn for it without cease. If only I could have that one thing, you tell yourself, all my problems would be solved. But once you get it, once the object of your desires is thrust into your hands, it begins to lose its charm. Other wants assert themselves, other desires make themselves felt, and bit by bit you discover that you're right back where you started.

By that point, of course, the girl no longer misses the doll. He has given her something else instead, and by the time those three weeks are up, the letters have cured her of her unhappiness. She has the story, and when a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.

Toen hij de kluizenaar in de zachte aarde naast het beekje begroef, besefte hij dat alles mogelijk zou zijn voor hem op deze plek. Hij had voedsel en water; hij had een huis; hij had een nieuwe identiteit voor zichzelf gevonden, een nieuw en totaal onverwacht leven. Hij kon de ommekeer bijna niet vatten. Nog geen uur geleden had hij willen sterven. Nu beefde hij van geluk, niet in staat te stoppen met lachen toen hij de ene schop na de andere op het gezicht van de dode man wierp.

He was not trying to buy happiness, but simply an absence of unhappiness.

Come sono felice quando penso a tutti i libri che ancora non ho letto, centinaia, migliaia di libri. Quante cose belle mi aspettano!

Si hubiera sido capaz de sonreír, habría sonreído en aquel momento

Me parece que siempre seré feliz allí donde no estoy

Una volta tanto mi lasciai andare, senza volermi sentire superiore alla mia felicità, senza volermi guardare dall'alto o essere più intelligente dei miei sentimenti.

Baudelaire: Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas. In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself.

te encontraste cayendo por la fisura entre el mundo y la palabra, el abismo que separa la existencia humana de nuestra capacidad de entender o expresar la verdad de la vida, y por motivos que te siguen desconcertando, aquella súbita caída por el aire vacío y sin límites te inundó de una sensación de libertad y felicidad.

A steady fuck is good for you.

I am an ardent believer in universal happiness. I would like everyone in the world to have satisfying, fulfilling work, for everyone to earn enough to escape the menace of poverty, but I have no idea how to achieve such worthy goals. Therefore, I will pass over these matters in silence.

if Disneyland was indeed the Happiest Place on Earth, you'd either keep it a secret or the price of admission would be free and not equivalent to the yearly per capita income of a small sub-Saharan African nation like Detroit.

If Disneyland was indeed the Happiest Place on Earth, you'd either keep it a secret or the price of admission would be free and not equivalent to the yearly per capita income of a small sub-Saharan African nation like Detroit.

If you suffer for something that gives delight, soon the suffering itself can give joy.

Empathy makes good people better, then, because kind people don't like suffering, and empathy makes this suffering salient. If you made a sadist more empathic, it would just lead to a happier sadist, and if I were indifferent to the baby's suffering, her crying would be nothing more than an annoyance.

We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods. The key to the happy life, it seems, is the good life: a life with sustained relationships, challenging work, and connections to community.

As Cicero said about the merits of friendship—but he could just as well have been talking about close relationships in general—it "improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief." I would prefer that those who care about me greet my panic with calm and my gloom with good cheer.

Blaise Pascal was even blunter: "All men seek happiness. This is without exception." And, to make clear how serious he is, he later adds: "This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, "High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-Being," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

the conclusion is even stronger—it's not merely that there exist some people who are both happy and have lives with meaning. It's that there is a correlation: happy people are more likely to say that their lives are meaningful, and people who say that their lives are meaningful are more likely to say that they're happy.

turns out that one can screw up being happy by trying to be happy—or at least by trying to be happy in the wrong way.

It turns out that pursuing extrinsic goals related to praise and reward—looking attractive, making money, and building up social status—makes you less happy and less fulfilled, and is linked with more depression, anxiety, and mental illness.