Thomas Brooks Quotes

Americans are good at pursuing happiness. And the Americans who pursue happiness most diligently show that we're also good at running it down and killing it.

That in all these worldly Things, that a Man pursues with the greatest Eagerness and Intention of Mind imaginable, he finds not half the Pleasure in the actual Possession of them, that he proposed to himself in the Expectation.

If there is no enjoyment in this world, there would not be so much suffering. As suffering really is the frustration of our attempts to enjoy.

In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness he finds not half the pleasure in the possession that he proposed to himself in the expectation.

We go on in our pleasures thinking they're going to last forever.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

Collecting is my joy; it gives me great satisfaction.

Are we having fun yet?

False expectations take away joy.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

Happiness is the target one only has to aim at in order to miss.

Pleasure is a by-product of doing something that is worth doing. Therefore, do not seek pleasure as such. Pleasure comes of seeking something else, and comes by the way.

If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.

Nothing goes sour more easily than the life of pleasure.

Happiness eludes us if we run after it.

You try for a little happiness, and what do you get? A few memories and a fat stomach!

There is sadness of when you're watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

Upon the whole, therefore, she found, what has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself. It was consequently necessary to name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity; to have some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the present, and prepare for another disappointment.

the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness – it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.

Life would be very pleasant if it were not for its enjoyments.

Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow's bliss.

If you're gonna be a failure, at least be one at something you enjoy.

The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.