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

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

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

Life is ours to be spent, not saved.

 D. H. Lawrence, in  Happiness and Misery and  Life and Death

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

 Oscar Levant, 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

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

 Mary Howitt, in  Happiness and Misery

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

 Elbert Hubbard, 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

Anxiety is interest paid on trouble before it is due.

 Dean Inge, in  Happiness and Misery

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

 Paul Jones, in  Happiness and Misery

Expect everything, and anything seems nothing. Expect nothing, and anything seems everything.

 Samuel Hazo, in  Happiness and Misery

Learn from the past. Look to the future. Live in the present.

 Steve Henthorn, in  Happiness and Misery

It is not the bad times on which we should dwell, it is only poison to the mind and soul. We shall rise up after we fall, and continue to go on -- dwelling on the good, high-spirited times of our lives.

 Austin Holmes, in  Happiness and Misery

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

 Mahatma Gandhi, in  Happiness and Misery