Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Happiness is not based on possessions, power or prestige, but on relationships with people you love and respect.

I can't cheer up — I don't want to cheer up. It's nicer to be miserable!

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

There are many more attempts to define happiness than unhappiness. It is because people know all too well what unhappiness is.

That which makes you miserable is the only sin. That which takes you away from yourself is the only thing to be avoided.

It makes me feel the way I need to feel.

She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy.

Happiness is hard because it's very subjective. I know the people that seem happiest to me, but whether they are actually - what they're really like inside is really hard to say.

Giving to other people makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad.

Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.

Happiness has to be installed in each person as a state of affairs completely cut off from the process that brought it about and, in particular, from the real situation. Man has to be affected with happiness. It is a tonality given to him. Contradiction: if one does take care to give him happiness, it is because he is a free creature--but in order to give it to him, one turns him into an object.

If you are happy, you are happy; nobody asks you why you are happy. Yes, if you are miserable, a question is relevant. If you are miserable, somebody can ask why you are miserable, and the question is relevant - because misery is against nature, something wrong is happening. When you are happy, nobody asks you why you are happy, except for a few neurotics. There are such people; I cannot deny the possibility.

The search for happiness is purely personal and not a model we can give to others.

The world would be better and brighter if people were taught the duty of being happy as well as the happiness of doing their duty.

If through practice of insight you develop a sense of ease, then time has no relevance. If you're miserable, time does matter. It's so unbearable, so enormous you want to get out of it as soon as possible.

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone that can make anyone happy or miserable.

For some people, it's the beginning of an awakening when they hear or read, "You have a voice in your head that never stops talking. Have you noticed that?" And suddenly they become aware that the thoughts go through their heads, whereas before they were so identified with them that they were those thoughts.

All the same,' said the Scarecrow, 'I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.' I shall take the heart,' returned the Tin Woodman, 'for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

Happiness is a talent like any other. It's another art form. Some people are good at it, some people aren't.

Happiness is a choice.

What is without us has no connection with happiness, only so far as the preservation of our lives and health depends upon it. . . . Happiness springs immediately from the mind.

A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening 'outside,' just by changing the contents of consciousness.

Be happy! and meditation will follow. Be happy, and religion will follow. Happiness is a basic condition. People become religious only when they are unhappy - then their religion is pseudo. Try to understand why you are unhappy.

People very quickly define success due to the amount of money something makes. In the end, I think everyone is searching for that experience. That's why we continue to go to the movies and watch television.