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Happiness consists of being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone.
Movie: 8 1/2
We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.
Shared happiness is double happiness. Shared sorrow is half sorrow.
There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.
Book: Mansfield Park
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.
Poem: The Divine Comedy
People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.
Every desire for good and happiness is for each person a very great and insidious Love. (…) Love is the desire to possess what is good for ever.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.
The happiness of life is made up of one minute fractions—the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a hearfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.
People who’ve had happy childhoods are wonderful, but they’re bland… An unhappy childhood compels you to use your imagination to create a world in which you can be happy. Use your old grief. That’s the gift you’re given.
The difference between happiness and unhappiness is the difference between expectations and reality.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.
The people who are truly happy in life are happy in spite of something, not because of something.
Now let’s talk about love. The best definition I’ve ever heard is very simple; you love someone to the degree that their happiness becomes essential to your own.
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
Happiness is a halfway station between too little and too much.
All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.
For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
Book: Brave New World
I was trying to explain to someone recently the difference between the intoxication of infatuation, and the happiness of a long-time love. It’s hard to explain, really. Infatuation has energy and excitement. It’s a high. It’s like the first drop on the roller coaster—exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Long-term love is sweet and slow and solid and secure. It’s knowing that someone knows you—knows all about you, knows what you like, knows how you think. Infatuation takes your breath away; love takes your fears away.
Are you happy in your work? If not, you are committing one of the worst “offences” against yourself.
Book: “The Joy Of Stress” by Peter G. Hanson
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
You can always find reasons to work. There will always be one more thing to do. But when people don’t take time out, they stop being productive. They stop being happy, and that affects the morale of everyone around them.
Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
Be happy. Talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours… never doubt the excellence and permanence of what is yet to be. Join the great company of those who make the barren places of life fruitful with kindness. Your success and happiness lie in you… the great enduring realities are love and service… resolve to keep happy and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing—sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death—can take that love away.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved,
loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness.
It is smelling flowers in the spring and remembering what they smell like in the winter.
“Reflections on the Secret of Happiness”
Each man’s necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is suscptible of; though he converses only with moles and fungi and disgraces his relatives, it is no matter if he knows what is steel to his flint
Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.
True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.
Q. “How Can You Tell If a Person Is Really Happy?”
A. Ask the man if he has the time. If he says time isn’t important, then he’s probably a happy person.
A. Ask the man if he has the time. If he says time isn’t important, then he’s probably a happy person.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
It’s good to be just plain happy; it’s a little better to know that you’re happy; but to understand that you’re happy and to know why and how…and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Love is the only one of the passions that includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else.
The pleasure in giving a dinner is mostly the pleasure of giving yourself. The effort you take is your way of showing your company that you care about them enough to give them a good time.
Happiness cannot be bought; indeed, money has very little to do with it.
The New York Times, 12/30/45
“How Can You Tell If a Person Is Really Happy?”
Get up close and count their worry lines. More than seven is bad news.
Get up close and count their worry lines. More than seven is bad news.
“Children on Happiness”
Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good happiness of one another.
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