#happin

I'm not unhappy," he said. "Only people with no purpose are unhappy. I've got a purpose. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#city-of-bones #jace-wayland #purpose #unhappiness #purpose

...is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#ignorance

All who joy would win Must share it -- Happiness was born a twin. ↗

— George Gordon Byron

#happiness #twin #winning

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#achievement

I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will eat away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#happiness #love

We are all doomed to seek our own happiness; we can't help ourselves. We are all, the cruel and the gentle alike, condemned to seeking that happiness in the dark. We use our need as the blind use a walking stick, to determine the safety of every forward step. ↗

— Jesse Browner

#safety

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice. ↗

— Adam Smith

#ethics #happiness #equality

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it. ↗

— Boethius

#misery #misery

She still cared for me, and the best way I could make amends to her was to be happy. I do have a knack for finding great women. ↗

— Craig Ferguson

#divorce #happiness #women #divorce

...nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#happiness #impermanence #joy #star #sky