Quotes About Happiness

Mieux vaut une vraie tristesse qu'une fausse joie.

Action is a part of the very reality it transforms, just as the wave is a part of the ocean. The point is not to renounce action, but to act with serenity. Our action will be all the more effective, and all the happier.

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

Long only for what you have.

I have a horror of rest; possessions encourage one to indulge in it, and there's nothing like security for making one fall asleep; I like life well enough to live it awake, and so, in the very midst of my riches, I maintain the sensation of a state of precariousness, by which means I aggravate, or at any rate intensify, my life. I will not say I like danger, but I like life to be hazardous, and I want it to demand at every moment the whole of my courage, my happiness, my health...

Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.

What would be the description of happines? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told.

No estoy ni triste ni alegre; este aire de aquí te llena de una muy vaga exaltación y te hace conocer un estado que parece tan lejano de la alegría como de la pena; quizá esto sea la felicidad.

It's madness to envy other people's happiness. Happiness doesn't come of the peg, it has to be made to measure.

La tristesse est une complication. Jamais je ne cherchais à analyser mon bonheur. ... Et je me demande à present si c'est bien le bonheur que je souhaite ou plutôt l'acheminement vers le bonheur.

How happy Ménalque is, I thought, since he has nothing! As for me, I am suffering because I want to conserve things. What importance is all this in the end?

I do not want to recollect. I should be afraid of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new hour's freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more and never having been.

But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.

Ah! que ce qu'on appelle bonheur est chose peu étrangère à l'âme et que les éléments qui semblent le composer du dehors importent peu!

If this was happiness, I know that I wanted to hold it like one wants in vain to hold running water in joined hands. But I was already feeling alongside this happiness something other than happiness which was covering my love like the coloring of autumn.

How would one tell a story about happiness? One can only tell of the origins of happiness and its destruction.

L'homme qui se dit heureux et qui pense, celui-là sera appelé vraiment fort.

Everything which formerly distressed me is now a delicious pleasure.

Être aveugle pour se croire heureux. Croire qu'on y voit clair pour ne pas chercher à y voir puisque : L'on ne peut se voir que malheureux.

How lucky Ménalque is, I thought, owning nothing! It is because I want to save things that I suffer. What does it all really matter?

Because I don't want to remember, he answered. If I did, I might keep the future from happening by letting the past encroach upon it. I create each hour's newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don't believe in dead things. What's the difference between no longer being and never having been?

Las más bellas obras humanas son obstinadamente dolorosas. ¿Qué sería el relato de la felicidad? Nada. Solo se cuenta lo que la prepara y lo que la destruye.