Happiness and Misery

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Arthur Schopenhauer, in Happiness and Misery

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

George Bernard Shaw, in Happiness and Misery

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.

George Orwell, 1984, in Happiness and Misery

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Anaïs Nin, in Happiness and Misery and Wisdom and Ignorance

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be so.

John Stuart Mill, in Happiness and Misery

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

Henry Louis Mencken, in Happiness and Misery

Joy is not in things, it is in us.

Jess Lair, in Happiness and Misery

The gods too are fond of a joke.

Aristotle, in Happiness and Misery

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.

John F. Kennedy, in Happiness and Misery

Life is short. Live it up.

Nikita Khrushchev, (New York Times Magazine, August 3, 1958), in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

Do not scorn the person who is perpetually happy. He does know something you don't.

Paul Jones, in Happiness and Misery

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Francis Bacon, in Happiness and Misery

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

Carol Burnett, in Happiness and Misery

All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.

Lord Byron, in Happiness and Misery

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

Jerry Chin, in Happiness and Misery

Be happy. It is a way of being wise.

Colette, in Happiness and Misery

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

Aesop, in Happiness and Misery and Success and Failure

Anxiety is interest paid on trouble before it is due.

Dean Inge, in Happiness and Misery

It is by fighting and triumphing over the enemies of the Buddha that we ourselves become Buddhas.

Daisaku Ikeda, (World Tribune, Oct. 29, 1999, p. 5), in Happiness and Misery and Science and Religion

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Elbert Hubbard, in Happiness and Misery