Robertson Davies Quotes

Psychologists say don't expect your life to be happy all the time. I go with the philosophy that every day can't be tops. Life is not like that - it's up and down.

I think you can be depressed and flourish, I think you can have cancer and flourish, I think you can be divorced and flourish. When we believed that happiness was only smiling and good mood, that wasn't very good for people like me, people in the lower half of positive affectivity.

There are so many things in life that make you sad, you have to be happy.

At times, I've been incapacitated by anxiety and unhappiness. You really know what joy is if you have experienced the opposite.

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

You need to be able to manage stress because hard times will come, and a positive outlook is what gets you through.

I have given up trying to be happy. It is no use and leads to nothing.

I kind of have a happy magnet. I can't stand being depressed, so I work my ass off to get out of it as soon as possible.

If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.

I'm always happy-go-lucky, and people look at me and find it shocking that I could be depressed.

I want to be happy and stable. My life is clearly going to slow down.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

Only dumb people are happy.

When you've seen a lot of bad stuff and just want to enjoy your life and be happy and have your kids happy and have your friends happy, you just have a value system where it raises the bar on what's important.

What's happening to me is I'm still happy and functioning, being able to listen to music, see good movies, read good books. What else is there that I can't, you know, I mean, I'm OK.

If I laugh a couple of times a day, I'm doing good. People think it's their God-given right to be happy, and it's just not. It's something you've got to work at. I like to paint the human condition, and the human condition is not smiles and happy people.

My life has had a lot of fun moments, but I tend to feel sadness more often.

We live in a time of extremes. People think that, on a scale of 1-10, if they're not at a 10 for happy, they're not happy.

If I'm in a good headspace, then it doesn't matter which direction things go.

Nobody can be happy all the time, and if you aim to be, ultimately you will never be happy.

One thing about me is that I don't like to be sad all the time.

For those suffering from depression, I know how dark and endless that tunnel can feel. But if happiness seems impossible to find, please hold on to the possibility of hope, faint though it may be.

Sometimes, when I talk to someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer or some other illness, I'll remind them: "If you were honest with yourself, you were depressed before this happened. And if this were over you would be happy for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and then something else would come along."

We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.