happiness
Other people’s heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat. SCHOPENHAUER, PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA(1851)
Notes & Highlights for Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
There were moments after long suffering when what he wanted most of all (shameful as it might be for him to admit) was to be pitied like a sick child. He wanted to be caressed, kissed, cried over, as sick children are caressed and comforted. He knew that he was an important functionary with a greying beard, and so this was impossible; yet all the s... See more
Notes & Highlights for Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
We have reached a stage at which we have surrounded ourselves with more things, but have less joy.
Fyodor Dostoevsky • The Karamazov Brothers (Oxford World's Classics)
Whatever you do, I wanted to say, do not be too happy. It will bring down fire on your head.
Madeline Miller • CIRCE
You are asking if I would rather know or forget. If I would give all of this up in order to be happy. Yes. It is important to be happy. Yes. I would go back to holding him and not knowing.
Franny Choi • Floating, Brilliant, Gone
If a man carries many such memories with him, they will keep him safe throughout his life. And even if only one such memory stays in our hearts, it may prove to be our salvation one day.
Fyodor Dostoevsky • The Karamazov Brothers (Oxford World's Classics)
So, he said, are you happy? It was an intimate question, nearly as personal as asking about my salary, acceptable in our homeland but not here. What was worse, however, was that I could not think of a satisfactory answer.
Viet Thanh Nguyen • The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
“Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of his audience if it were known to him that, with the exception of one or two, it consisted entirely of deaf people?”
Notes & Highlights for Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
Tolstoy sums up the judge’s life in a single sentence: “The pleasures Ivan Ilyich derived from his work were those of pride; the pleasures he derived from society were those of vanity; but it was genuine pleasure that he derived from playing whist.”