Spencer Johnson Quotes

Any expectation is what pain is.

Suffering is getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get.

Desire is poison at lunch and wormwood at dinner; your bed is a stone, friendship is hateful and your fancy is always fixed on one thing.

Any object of desire is bound to bring frustration. Any expectation is bound to turn into frustration. Expectation is the beginning of frustration, the very seed. Beware of it!

Want is misery.

My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.

Discontent arises from a knowledge of the possible, as contrasted with the actual

People are hurting, and they feel very disengaged and disenfranchised.

A problem only exists if there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening.

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.

Unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it's just a drag, like a cold or having no money.

You know, if my life was a horse, I’d shoot it. (Susan)

The more unhappy you are, the more miserable you are, the more you're going to suffer.

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us.

Where desire ends up causing suffering is when it fixates.

What is more miserable than discontent?

Misery and shame are nearly allied.

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.

Expectation is the mother of all frustration.

Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester.

In trouble to be troubled, Is to have your trouble doubled.