Harlan Ellison Quotes

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness; and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced.

Sometimes happiness consists of finding the right balance of misery.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.

Today's teardrops are tomorrow's rainbows.

There is a wide world out there, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth and the latter makes the journey tolerable.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Human beings need unhappiness at least as much as they need happiness.

Troubles are as endless as pleasures are brief.

Life is possible only through challenges. Life is possible only when you have both good weather and bad weather, when you have both pleasure and pain, when you have both winter and summer, day and night. When you have both sadness and happiness, discomfort and comfort. Life moves between these two polarities. Moving between these two polarities you learn how to balance. Between these two wings you learn how to fly to the farthest star.

I think life is perverse. It can be beautiful, but it won't.

When I am happy I feel like crying, but when I am sad I don’t feel like laughing. I think it is better to be happy; then you get two feelings for the price of one.

Misery is what happiness rests upon. Happiness is what misery lurks beneath.

I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full.

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life.

We must feel the pain before the pleasure, only then can we tell them apart.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness.

Happiness not only needs no justification, but it is also the only final test of whether what I am doing is right for me. Only of course happiness is not the same as pleasure; it includes the pain of losing as well as the pleasure of finding.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

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.

Our life is...a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, can hold it at bay.