3,271 quotes found
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”
“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
“There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.”
“People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive ...”
“It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy. ”
“Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.”
“Memory is the happiness of being alone.”
“My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?”
“Is anyone anywhere happy?”
“Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the ple...”
“But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”
“Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's eve...”
“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to ...”
“I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.”
“The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.”
“Everybody in the world is seeking happinessand there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.”
“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”
“There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing...”
“Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.”
“Wait a second," Four says. I turn toward him, wondering which version of Four I'll see now-the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile does...”
