Happiness and Misery

Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.

George Bernard Shaw, in Happiness and Misery and Wealth and Poverty

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

Aesop, in Happiness and Misery and Success and Failure

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

George Bernard Shaw, in Happiness and Misery

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.

William Shakespeare, in Happiness and Misery

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

Arthur Schopenhauer, in Happiness and Misery

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt, in Happiness and Misery

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

Carl Sandburg, in Happiness and Misery

Man is only happy as he finds a work worth doing, and does it well.

E. Merrill Root, in Happiness and Misery and Work and Recreation

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

Elbert Hubbard, 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

If we couldn't laugh, we'd all go insane.

Jimmy Buffett, in Happiness and Misery

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

Carol Burnett, 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

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.

Blaise Pascal, in Happiness and Misery and Love and Hate

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.

Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book, in Happiness and Misery

What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.

Jean Paul Richter, in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.

Voltaire, 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