#happiness

I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness. ↗

— Hugh Laurie

#misery #misery

Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong. ↗

— Marianne Williamson

#children

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#artists

The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#happiness #health #safety #scope-of-government #purpose

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. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#stupidity #stupidity

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.' 'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. 'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last. Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#freedom #happiness #rights #unhappiness #freedom

Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive. ↗

— Joanne Harris

#bittersweet #chocolate #happiness #heart #simplicity

Well, I am happy, and I won't fret, but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants… ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#little-women #louisa-may-alcott #louisa-may-alcott

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#sadness #l-m-montgomery

I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#cure #depression #fight #happiness #i