#pines

Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them. ↗

— Katherine Dunn

#eyes #happiness #judgement #movies #society

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves. ↗

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#flow #happiness #experience

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#happiness #nature #nature

I had everything I could possibly want -- yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had. ↗

— Gretchen Rubin

#happiness #nature

جدارة الرسالات السامية تقاس عادة بما تحققه من سعادة للبشر تتمثل أول ما تتمثل في الأخذ بيد المضطهدين ↗

— نجيب محفوظ

#humanity #oppression #religion #religion

The relationship you take for granted is the one that needs the greatest work. ↗

— George Alexiou

#integrity #joy #kindness #love #relationships

No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.' 'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing? Which of us has ever tried it? ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#happiness #purity #righteous #respect

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#authors #elements-of-style #favors #grammar #happiness

The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made. ↗

— F. Sionil José

#philippines #poverty #prostitution #social #women

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

— Joanne Harris

#bittersweet #chocolate #happiness #heart #simplicity