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8481fd9 Paradise was always over there, a day's sail away. But it's a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home. travel happiness escapism paradise wanderlust J. Maarten Troost
11d9a2f Mara, that's the life I want to give you. That's what I'm offering you. I want to fill you life with color and warmth. I want to fill it with light. Give me a chance marriage happiness love Francine Rivers
70695ff "I Hear the sledges with the bells - Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells - Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! - From the molten - golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! - how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III Hear the loud alarum bells - Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now - now to sit, or never, By the side of the pale - faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear, it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells - Of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - In the clamor and the clanging of the bells! IV Hear the tolling of the bells - Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people - ah, the people - They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone - They are neither man nor woman - They are neither brute nor human - They are Ghouls: - And their king it is who tolls: - And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells: - Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells: - To the sobbing of the bells: - Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells - To the tolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, poe poetry happiness horror Edgar Allan Poe
b123905 Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving? struggle optimism happiness life survival Tom Stoppard
9a8e769 Reason, Observation and Experience -- the Holy Trinity of Science -- have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect. nature reason inspiration science happiness hope content holy-trinity trinity observation experience supernatural Robert Green Ingersoll
9aeec05 Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me rain beauty happiness love inspirational Mary Oliver
4772f3f To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. happiness clover lightheartedness revery prairie Emily Dickinson
9e775aa The greatest thing about dreams is they don't expire. They can lay dormant for years and when you pull them out and dust them off, they shine like new. inspiration inspirational-quotes dreams happiness inspirational dream-quotes Casi McLean
af8f398 We will never be happy until we make God the source of our fulfillment and the answer to our longings. He is the only one who should have power over our souls. happiness inspirational Stormie Omartian
f861532 "A man worth being with is one... That never lies to you Is kind to people that have hurt him A person that respects another's life That has manners and shows people respect That goes out of his way to help people That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met Who brags about your accomplishments with pride Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less That is a peacemaker That will see you through illness Who keeps his promises Who doesn't blame others, but finds the good in them That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars That doesn't need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy That is gentle and patient with children Who won't let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow Who lives what he says he believes in Who doesn't hold a grudge or hold onto the past Who doesn't ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him Who will run with your dreams That makes you laugh at the world and yourself Who forgives and is quick to apologize Who doesn't betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women Who doesn't react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn't plan to keep Who takes his children's spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down Who communicates to solve problems Who doesn't play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them Who is real and doesn't pretend to be something he is not Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God Who doesn't have an ego or believes he is better than anyone Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met Who works hard to provide for the family Who doesn't feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family Who is morally free from sin Who sees your potential to be great Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you Who is a gentleman Who is honest and lives with integrity Who never discusses your private business with anyone Who will protect his family marriage gratitude freedom joy friendship happiness blessed grateful christ-like best-choice best-friend god-s-plan honorable-man jealous-women jim-alder joyful king-of-the-kingdom life-partner life-partners lucky-girl lucky-me mate my-husband positive-outlook qualities revelations righteous-man spiritual-man staying-positive tests the-man winning partner the-best selection husband dating father Shannon L. Alder
817ff85 Happiness has to do with your mindset, not with outside circumstance. action agreement-with-reality happiness life inspirational mindset circumstances Steve Maraboli
30794bb Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn't notice. optimism happiness inspirational umbrellas observation Julie Andrews Edwards
ff6d4fa He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed of any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness. (p. 119) happiness pleasure Charles Dickens
8cb75ef The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings that have been suppressed and have built up inside. There is a voiceless cry resting in the depths of our souls, waiting for expression. Art gives the soul's feelings voice and form. karma self-reformation humanism destiny happiness inspirational buddhism peace Daisaku Ikeda
7f4becc Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office--the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement--is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick. depression future reality happiness life assistance bupropion hays-office measurement mentorship publicity soothsaying horoscopes uncertainty-principle werner-heisenberg self-delusion perception virtues writers smoking Christopher Hitchens
dd07f1c True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand. happiness philosophy mindfulness Henry James
b4c7b1c I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite. happiness Hermann Hesse
f3c5444 Be happy without picking flaws. happiness Victor Hugo
e338e81 Cake is happiness! If you know the way of the cake, you know the way of happiness! If you have a cake in front of you, you should not look any further for joy! joy looking-no-further the-way-of-the-cake the-way-to-happiness understanding-happiness understanding-joy inspirational-life inspirational-quotes life-and-living living happiness life inspirational cake cakes C. JoyBell C.
fa2043d The most important thing is this: to be able at any moment to be free to choose a life that makes you happy. happy live-life-happy choice inspiration inspirational-quotes inspire life-quotes living optimistic positive-affirmation positive-life inspiring positive positive-thinking optimism happiness life inspirational choose Roy T. Bennett
98c5403 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 leak 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. happiness blessings contentment pray soul Elizabeth Gilbert
cf706a7 Most parents try really hard to give their kids the best possible life. They give them the best food and clothes they can afford, take their own kind of take on training kids to be honest and polite. But what they don't realize is no matter how much they try, their kids will get out there. Out to this complicated little world. If they are lucky they will survive, through backstabbers, broken hearts, failures and all the kinds of invisible insane pressures out there. But most kids get lost in them. They will get caught up in all kinds of bubbles. Trouble bubbles. Bubbles that continuously tell them that they are not good enough. Bubbles that get them carried away with what they think is love, give them broken hearts. Bubbles that will blur the rest of the world to them, make them feel like that is it, that they've reached the end. Sometimes, even the really smart kids, make stupid decisions. They lose control. Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second of every day. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives broken-hearts cutting-your-self depression emo emotion hopeless-romantic lfe-essons phases romance sorrow joy happiness life love inspirational childhood-trauma teenage-love infatuation growing-up helplessness crying parents bullying teenagers trapped childhood Thisuri Wanniarachchi
2865ea8 Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead death happiness Neil Gaiman
420a1b5 Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. pain happiness dichotomy stoicism T.H. White
588cfa1 "It sounded old. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't "deserve" his family's dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn't even "deserve" to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he "deserve" Hagar's vengeance. But why shouldn't his parents tell him their personal problems? If not him, then who? And if a stranger could try to kill him, surely Hagar, who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after the flavor was gone--she had a right to try to kill him too. Apparently he though he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be...what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness." pain responsibility sorrow family happiness deserve maturity Toni Morrison
682f264 Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness. It is the aroma of life, lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he may be dependent upon others; what he is rests with him alone. joy happiness life ideals David O. McKay
eb18d70 If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe. Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day--the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening? It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we're miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn't seasoned just the way we like. When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we're up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first. In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter. enlightenment mark-nepo joy happiness perspective misery Mark Nepo
8dfa32a Often, moreover, it is...that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes. happiness inspirational eccentric ridiculous hard-times Tom Robbins
2ef0da8 I cannot tell if what the world considers 'happiness' is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness. happiness life inspirational Chuang-Tzu
b72294e I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher. happiness Jeanette Winterson
c579aad Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you. happiness wanting Heather O'Neill
d6b8f43 LEONATO Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband. BEATRICE Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. marriage men equality self-determination independence freedom empowerment happiness matrimony husbands singles William Shakespeare
a5c0eb4 Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone. reading happiness life self-sufficiency Saul Bellow
87a6bf6 Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile. happiness exile home G.K. Chesterton
a3e5b0d Beauty and love pass, I know... Oh, there's sadness, too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses- death sadness happiness roses fitzgerald rose F Scott Fitzgerald
c9b47c6 She laughed. 'It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.' 'Happy,' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception--especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence. happiness love existential Hunter S. Thompson
48e39b0 Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you. Have you given much thought to our mortal condition? Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen. There's no one alive who can say if he will be tomorrow. Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery. No one can teach it, no one can grasp it. Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink! But don't forget Aphrodite--that's You can let the rest go. Am I making sense? I think so. How about a drink. Put on a garland. I'm sure the happy splash of wine will cure your mood. We're all mortal you know. Think mortal. Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life, mortality death sadness happiness life cheer comedy Anne Carson
845e941 It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? -- ... There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and electricity; as exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and those of , so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains those despicable dreams of de Pauw -- neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [ ] mankind influence discovery politics reason science happiness philosophy artifice constitution divine-right expectation holy-water jefferson paine secular secular-government thomas-jefferson thomas-paine laws invention rights government divinity superstition John Adams
09dd3e9 It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories. happiness victory W. Somerset Maugham
059a179 one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive. loss happiness love time-traveling childhood-memory mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
ca38fab You don't have to be part of a couple to be happy, you know. happiness love self-acceptance single contentment couple self-esteem Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
db2becf Sometimes when you're young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you're living on someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been. Then we grow up and our hearts break into two. happiness love hearts-in-atlantis stephen-king Stephen King
1a7c393 Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun; Thyself from thine affection Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye All lesser birds will take their jollity. Up, up, fair bride, and call Thy stars from out their several boxes, take Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make Thyself a constellation of them all; And by their blazing signify That a great princess falls, but doth not die. Be thou a new star, that to us portends Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends. stars light joy happiness brides brightness jewels phoenix radiance imagery wedding metaphors sun John Donne
a94d0da too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow. sadness happiness Amy Tan
0bb92fb The moon is the reflection of your heart and moonlight is the twinkle of your love. education happiness heart hope intelligence life love moon philosophy truth twinkle wisdom inspirational reflection knowledge moonlight Debasish Mridha
30e633d The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality. suffering happiness negation Charlotte Brontë
0282e26 "But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected. "I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes--when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables--when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had--when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -Anne" romance happiness pearls tears L.M. Montgomery
5916a4d I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out. loss happiness love mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
8decdd2 "But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected. "I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes--when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables--when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had--when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -Anne" -- romance happiness pearls tears L.M. Montgomery
c383efa LEONATO Well, then, go you into hell? BEATRICE No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. marriage heaven self-determination independence freedom empowerment happiness matrimony husbands singles William Shakespeare
a967c90 "Justice is the only worship. Love is the only priest. Ignorance is the only slavery. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now, The place to be happy is here, time morality happiness how-to-be-happy place Robert Green Ingersoll
c1b1631 when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth. happiness smile Mitch Albom
f46de37 There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing. sleep woman women sadness happiness waking melancholy William Shakespeare
5cabe7a A week feels like a year when you're seventeen and in love. A twenty minute drive might as well be an ocean. But we were together again and the whole world was rejoicing, even the gravel crunched melodiously under our feet as we danced onward through the night. happiness love summer Chloe Rattray
2dcccc0 The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. politics happiness Dan Savage
e346027 "An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. Not very far away are Death Valley, and Yosemite, and Sequoia Forest with its giant trees which were growing long before the Parthenon was built; they are the oldest living things in the world. One should visit such places often, and be conscious, in the midst of the city, of their surrounding presence. For this is the real nature of California and the secret of its fascination; this untamed, undomesticated, aloof, prehistoric landscape which relentlessly reminds the traveller of his human condition and the circumstances of his tenure upon the earth. "You are perfectly welcome," it tells him, "during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong, don't blame me. I accept no responsibility. I am not part of your neurosis. Don't cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy." risk nature freedom empowerment happiness wildness liberation self-responsibility environment mountains risk-taking los-angeles desert Christopher Isherwood
9c9917b Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine. happiness Victor Hugo
deca7f0 Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths. unhappiness christianity morality religion happiness imoral catholicism church discipline Fulton J. Sheen
3782d2c I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death. happiness pip Charles Dickens
251d6b5 I kissed him hard. The few people in the bar must have been thinking that all they were seeing was just a kiss. They didn't know that this kiss stood for my whole life - and his life, as well. The life of anyone who has waited, dreamed, and searched for their true path. The moment of that kiss contained every happy moment I had ever lived. kissing true-love happiness love true-path waiting Paulo Coelho
e02c7b1 A piece of happiness should never be taken as due. happiness Charlaine Harris
6e1660c A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board. Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend. music humor happiness rock-stars hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy logic Douglas Adams
960b6f2 Soul mates. They really call themselves that, which makes sense, because I guess they are ... They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride though life like conjoined jellyfish - expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other's spaces liquidly. Making it look easy. perfection marriage true-love relationships happiness love ideal-love ideal-lover jellyfish unconditional-love soul-mate other-half soul-mates peace Gillian Flynn
317b6d1 We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments. reality life-lessons happiness perception perception-of-reality perceptions Stefan Zweig
66accad The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable. happiness Albert Camus
203f665 Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope. reality happiness inspirational quotient Jodi Picoult
1e82650 Happiness is not an absolute value. It is a state of comparison. happiness Zadie Smith
2c49753 When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. feelings sadness happiness life old Jonathan Safran Foer
89c002a I'm so alive. As I stand facing the beauty of the never-ending Pacific Ocean, a late afternoon breeze blows down from the hills behind. As always, it is a beautiful day. The sun is making its final descent. The magic is about to begin. The skies are ready to burn with brilliance, as it turns from a soft blue to a bright orange. Looking towards the West, I stare in awe at the hypnotic power of the waves. A giant curl begins to take form, then breaks with a thundering clap as it crashes on the shore. magic optimism happiness seashore Dave Pelzer
0f46e89 "October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end the tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content." seasons reading satisfaction happiness ending-a-chapter turning-a-page fairy-tale happy-ending season october book garden tale Neil Gaiman
109c8c1 "If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer... If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. dreams happiness crete jack-r-kearns mrs-sjostrom third-grade greece nostalgia Shel Silverstein
36a6e21 People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy. pain suffering happy joy happiness relief Ayn Rand
c80573e "Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!" marriage christianity spirituality religion happiness philosophy family-planning joy-of-marriage unhappy-marriage pro-life childbirth expectation Fulton J. Sheen
6e3c38a My arm draped her shoulder; we both felt safe, as if we were a complete solar system unto ourselves, dangling in the sky, warm heated planets inside a universe of stars. -Richard inspiration happiness love Douglas Coupland
d7d737c I hope death will be a great happiness, a happiness as great as that of love, fulfilled love happiness love philosophy Hermann Hesse
e807e26 "I love you as much as the ocean kisses the shore true-love happiness love unconditional falling-in-love Sarah Kay
27536a2 Acceptance means no complaining, and happiness means no complaining about the things over which you can do nothing. happiness complaining control Wayne W. Dyer
0b1f52e "Max." Fang let go of my hand. "Right now, it's really all about--us." He swooped down to the right in a big semicircle, ending facing me. Slowly we climbed upward, until we were almost vertical, flying straight up to the sun. While carefully synchronizing our wings--they almost touched--Fang leaned in, gently put one hand behind my neck, and kissed me. It was just about as close to heaven as I'll ever get, I guess. I closed my eyes, lost in the feeling of flying and kissing and being with the one person in the world I completely, utterly trusted. When we finally broke apart, we looked down at the others, who were way far below us now. Angel was shading her eyes, looking up at us with a big smile. She was sitting on a dolphin's back, and I hoped soon someone would explain to the dolphin that he shouldn't let Angel take advantage of his good nature. Still looking up at us, Angel gave us a big thumbs-up. "She approves," Fang said with a hint of amusement. "Jeez," I wondered aloud. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" kissing kiss heaven trust friendship happiness love i-approve-too shipping dolphin flying couple sun smile wings otp James Patterson
dccf0d0 Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me. marriage self-determination independence empowerment happiness love marriage-proposal matrimony dignity courtship husbands wooing pleasure William Shakespeare
4dc075b Zakath stared at the floor. 'I suddenly feel very helpless,' he admitted, 'and I don't like the feeling. I've been rather effectively dethroned, you know. This morning I was the Emperor of the largest nation on earth; this afternoon, I'm going to be a vagabond.' You might find it refreshing,' Silk told him lightly. Shut up, Kheldar,' Zakath said almost absently. He looked back at Polgara. 'You know something rather peculiar?' What's that?' Even if I hadn't given my word, I'd still have to go to Kell. It's almost like a compulsion. I feel as if I'm being driven, and my driver is a blindfolded girl who's hardly more than a child.' There are rewards,' she told him. Such as what?' Who knows? Happiness, perhaps.' He laughed ironically. 'Happiness has never been a driving ambition of mine, Lady Polgara, not for a long time now.' You may have to accept it anyway,' She smiled. 'We aren't allowed to choose our rewards any more than we are our tasks. Those decisions are made for us. fantasy happiness David Eddings
e4a63dd And I ask myself what it is about me that makes this wonderful, beautiful woman return. Is it because I'm pathetic, helpless in my current state, completely dependent on her? Or is it my sense of humour, my willingness to tease her, to joke my way into painful, secret places? Do I help her understand herself? Do I make her happy? Do I do something for her that her husband and son can't do? Has she fallen in love with me? As the days pass and I continue to heal, my body knitting itself back together, I begin to allow myself to think that she has. happiness love pathetic dependence helplessness sense-of-humor Mohsin Hamid
6929cbf Remember the botched brothel-visit in L'Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory. happiness life memory pleasure Julian Barnes
5829087 I've learned that the more people I love -- and I mean really, really, completely, unconditionally love -- the happier I am. happiness love penny-reid Penny Reid
ff9ccf7 "The "pursuit of happiness" is such a key element of the "American (ideological) dream" that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: "We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Where did the somewhat awkward "pursuit of happiness" come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property-- the latter was replaced by "the pursuit of happiness" during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves' right to property." slavery happiness property Slavoj Žižek
5341ead "(about William Blake) As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me." And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy." ...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. " freedom living happiness william-blake glory effort creativity Brenda Ueland
76b3c11 I've never been afraid of them. Not once. Because I had you. true-love happiness love dawson-cole nicholas-sparks Nicholas Sparks
edff35f The media represents world that is more real than reality that we can experience. People lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They also begin to engage with the fantasy without realizing what it really is. They seek happiness and fulfilment through the simulacra of reality, e.g. media and avoid the contact/interaction with the real world. reality happiness simulation wants media Jean Baudrillard
7ffc099 They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas. happiness omelas walk-away unknown Ursula K. Le Guin
b8f878d Action and personal happiness have no truck with each other; they are eternally at war. happiness Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
97b7990 and what shall I have to dream of when I have been so happy in reality beside you! happiness love Fyodor Dostoyevsky
92e490f The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness. nature happiness green-thumb Michael Pollan
1366f2e Okay, if this is what falling in love feels like, someone please kill me now. (Not literally, overzealous readers.) But it was all too much--too much emotion, too much happiness, too much longing, perhaps too much ice cream... happy feelings happiness love ice-cream-is-love ice-cream James Patterson
b69da9f Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight) happiness Peter S. Beagle
44a6c8a We are all a great deal luckier that we realize, we usually get what we want - or near enough. happiness luck Roald Dahl
7284348 If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness? happiness inspirational Jodi Picoult
cd9f26b For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain? happiness Joyce Carol Oates
dbc1c16 He finds it extraordinary that on some mornings, just after he has woken up, as he bends down to tie his shoes, he is flooded with a happiness so intense, a happiness so naturally and harmoniously at one with the world, that he can feel himself alive in the present, a present that surrounds him and permeates him, that breaks through him with the sudden, overwhelming knowledge that he is alive. And the happiness he discovers in himself at that moment is extraordinary. happiness extraordinary Paul Auster
bd3af4c Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't got. happiness life inspirational Leo Tolstoy
08884ec You are no ruin sir--no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop. illness marriage strength happiness love safety sickness Charlotte Brontë
c6267ba "It's the same thing with faith, by the way." We don't want to get stuck having to go to services all the time, or having to follow all the rules. We don't want to commit to God. We'll take Him when we need Him, or when things are going good. But real commitment? That requires staying power---in faith and in marriage." And if you don't commit? I asked. "Your choice. But you miss what's on the other side." What's on the other side? "Ah." He smiled, "A happiness you cannot find alone." mitch-albom marriage religion god happiness Mitch Albom
4dbd6dc If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening ... marriage self-determination independence freedom empowerment happiness blessings matrimony husbands singles William Shakespeare
c869e44 We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire. self-knowledge happiness status possessions anxiety materialism desire Alain de Botton
08645e8 Frugality, I've learned, has its own cost, one that sometimes lasts forever. money happiness Nicholas Sparks
01c0494 The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants 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. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. pain happiness intellectual Ursula K. Le Guin
eecd89c And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. equality fear happiness fahrenheit-451 ray-bradbury inferiority peace Ray Bradbury
0f336d7 Our sadness won't be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain. sadness happiness life art melancholy Alain de Botton
3e9cae1 The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. happiness life Elizabeth Gilbert
0d1e9ca "The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: "Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph." music happiness life philosophy Hermann Hesse
7c5c4ed lymn lHq nfyD ls`d@ ltfh@ happiness Naguib Mahfouz
60da475 How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?--from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. sorrow happiness Edgar Allan Poe
420cacc I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room loss happiness love mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
bd205b6 Ladies, stress shows on your face. Happiness is the true beauty weapon. happiness inspirational stress Susan Sarandon
ee54a85 When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness. suffering happiness inspirational sufffering les-misérables Victor Hugo
21ea60f "Happiness is an illusion, Natalie. It doesn't actually exist." "Of course it does," I said. "It's what you feel when you're not sad." "That's unconsciousness. And I'm pretty sure that I'm miserable when I am unconscious, too." happiness natalie unconsciousness lee mr-monk monk miserable sad Lee Goldberg
5ab42bf "Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn't look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me--little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. lovely madness lovers new-day gratitude drinking joy inspiration sadness music songs happiness hope be-okay fine panic-attacks park starving panic-attack chest sound ed okay self-destruction wellness grateful hopeful anxiety alcohol coffee spring well-being art singing hurt balance sky flowers crying focus panic sing tears walking hopeless recovery sad self-harm smoking mental-health Charlotte Eriksson
42c446d Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. happiness destructive new government power Cory Doctorow
8113469 Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door. sadness happiness Jeanette Winterson
4fe71d8 There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone. marriage happiness love keystones married-life togetherness support matrimony harmony Wallace Stegner
50ba1ef There is nothing that makes me happier than sitting around the dinner table and talking until the candles are burned down. happiness hospitality dinner Madeleine L'Engle
4fa89d4 My personal opinion is that the neutral position on the mood spectrum--what I called emotional sea level--is not happiness but rather contentment and the calm acceptance that is the goal of many kinds of spiritual practice. happiness spiritual-practice Andrew Weil
e37929a "We still counted happiness and health and love and luck and beautiful children as "ordinary blessings." happiness love health children luck Joan Didion
4b4db23 They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is. kindness happiness generosity William Maxwell
aa9dc6c I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, and there are those who feel that happiness is not to be expected: that it is not, in fact, one of the rights of man. Nor, God knows, one of the rights of women. happiness Hilary Mantel
ad7788f With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected and tortured after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves again. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? mind equality free books imagination education happiness intelligence conform breach burning examiners fliers grabbers imaginative-creators jumpers knowers moutains racers runners snatchers swimmers tinkerers bright intellectual critics target image dread judgment unfamiliar judge constitution rights cowardice bullying weapons different creativity torture school Ray Bradbury
f8d8060 He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. happiness Leo Tolstoy
7fe57e4 Year after year of dirty snow and bitter winds... houses and whole districts of people who aren't really unhappy, but worse, who are neither happy nor unhappy; people who are ugly because they're neither ugly nor beautiful; creatures that are dismally neutral, who long without longings as though they're unconscious, unconsciously suffering from being alive. living happiness longing Eugène Ionesco
83cb55e Oh, I have always been proud, I always wanted all or nothing! You see it was just because I am not one who will accept half a happiness, but always wanted all personality happiness esteem settle proud pride Fyodor Dostoyevsky
23c5d7f "...are you happy?" "I am content." "What is the difference?" "Between happiness and contentment? Ah, there you have me. It is not easy to put into words. Contentment is a state of mind and body when the two work in harmony, and there is no friction. The mind is at peace, and the body also. The two are sufficient to themselves. Happiness is elusive--coming perhaps once in a life-time--and approaching ecstasy." "Not a continuous thing, like contentment?" "No, not a continuous thing. But there are, after all, degrees of happiness." -- happiness Daphne du Maurier
b29bc9f The road to happiness is paved with good deeds for others. people goodness happiness life road-to-happiness purpose Lisa Schroeder
a837436 Among other things, neuroplasticity means that emotions such as happiness and compassion can be cultivated in much the same way that a person can learn through repetition to play golf and basketball or master a musical instrument, and that such practice changes the activity and physical aspects of specific brain areas. happiness neuroplasticity Andrew Weil
00157f6 If everyone could feel as I felt at that moment, dressed in my preppy sweater and McGregor coat and about to set out on a little journey with my Bambi-eyed girlfriend on Christmas Eve, all conflicts in the world would vanish. Mellow smiles would rule the earth. joy relationship happiness love peace Ryū Murakami
f162cad It was a flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing. happy freedom inspiration living happiness life love inspirational flying book fly falling Tim O'Brien
29ba9b1 What's fun for other people may not be fun for you- and vice versa. personality happiness preferences Gretchen Rubin
8336e29 If you examine your motive for doing anything, you'll soon discover that your reason is that you believe it will make you happy. inspire happiness motivate medications holistic-health passages-ventura substance-abuse passages-malibu self-care self-love balance therapy Chris Prentiss
8cc1de6 "Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good." happiness pleasure Madeleine L'Engle
e7b882b To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality - wasn't an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. 'A rich emotional life,' she'd written, 'is a privilege reserved only for the daring few'. feelings living sadness happiness life numbness emotions Ryū Murakami
8d79680 "Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us down again. Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of finding perfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won't be disappointed." If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowed to myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, not God, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, or dominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, to take what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'd been kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed, deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now." perfection fate defeat greed happiness decieved poisened used years-of-struggle towmorrow great-expectations defeated vow captive doomed wanting striving doom vows years dreaming wants put-downs expectations longing V.C. Andrews
4e3b021 You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it--which is what matters most. happiness life misfortune Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4f7b793 My happiness comes from the kindness of those around me. kindness positive happiness tohru-honda Natsuki Takaya
3405bfe No one's happy here, you know that. But I am content, and maybe that's enough for me. happiness lost-in-time melissa-de-la-cruz contentment hell Melissa de la Cruz
c2c626b Times of terror and the deepest misery may arrive, but if there is to be any happiness in this misery it can only be a spiritual happiness, related to the past in the rescue of the culture of early ages and to the future in a serene and indefatigable championship of the spirit in a time which would otherwise completely swallow up the material. present history past happiness Hermann Hesse
a9e312c The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now. happiness ray-bradbury Ray Bradbury
25ab879 In the path of our happiness shall we find the learning for which we have chosen this lifetime. learning happiness inspirational Richard Bach
8906bb9 Don't you think they're as bored as you are? You think you're somebody special? You think I wake up everyday so happy to see you? You're a snob, just in the other way. Do you think you are the only one who wants something else? Another life? happiness life Zadie Smith
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