Modern western man has some basic misconceptions about the nature of happiness. The origin of the word is instructive: happiness stems from the root verb to happen, which implies that our happiness is what happens.
It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.
Heed my words, daughter, if you ever mean to be happy: Never give yourself to a man.
Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent- a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet is insufferable.
No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy.
I'm not a greedy man; there really is nothing I couldn't live without. But if there was a fire, and I saved my child and my pets, I'd be happy.
It's not right to believe that the only way you're gonna get a job and the only way you're gonna get a man or be happy is by being so skinny.
No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.
Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?
Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.
'Eureka' was very bad timing. The early 1980s: Reagan and Thatcher were in, greed was good, and here was a film about the richest man in the world who still couldn't be happy. Politically and sociologically, it was out of step.
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is always possible to be happy.
The will of man is his happiness.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
Now if a man thus favoured died as he has lived, he will be just the one you are looking for: the only sort of person who deserves to be called happy. But mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but ...
I'm a very comfortable and happy-go-lucky old man. I never wanted to be great, because I'd just get worried.
Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, preached this doctrine; and he said: 'Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unb...
The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.
The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves ...
