Ian Mcewan Quotes

Study after study shows that happiness precedes important outcomes and indicators of thriving.

At last, psychology gets serious about glee, fun, and happiness. Martin Seligman has given us a gift-a practical map for the perennial quest for a flourishing life.

I'm not a big proponent of happiness. I think it's highly overrated. I think misery is underrated. There's so much value in that. You can't have one without the other.

It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals.

In the New World, happiness is enforced.

One Dilbert Blog reader noted that current research shows that happiness causes success more than success causes happiness. That makes sense to me. There's plenty of research about people having a baseline of happiness that doesn't vary much with circumstances. And given that happy people are typically optimistic, energetic, and fun to work with, I can see how happiness would lead to success.

Happiness and unhappiness differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one pressed in tin ... Each carries the same water.

One should always avoid unnecessary unhappiness. Especially if one is an immortal. They taught us that in school.

Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however - that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc

Happiness is the highest form of wisdom.

Would I have been happier? Maybe. But then, happiness was overrated.

Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.

What I've also noticed is the term happiness, or happy is intimidating to some people. Some people deny that it's even possible to be happy, or to achieve happiness. Happiness sounds like this magical destination that you arrive at and then everything is sort of solved, or it's different.

What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

Happiness is not mere pleasure, not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure.

If by happiness you mean instead an ordinary contentment, then yes - I'm fairly contented. Not satisfied - contented.

Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.

[Happiness is] a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself - it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant.

He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that doesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.

Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route.

And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are.

Part of positive psychology is about being positive, but sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate. Some people don't want to be happy, and that's okay. They want meaningful lives, and those are not always the same as happy lives.

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular.