Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes

A weakened mind always sees everything through a black veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is dark, which is why you see such a cloudy sky.

I'm not a tortured soul.

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

It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.

What I sometimes mistake for ecstasy is simply the absence of grief.

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

It's obvious, but perhaps worth saying, that happiness has virtually nothing to do with the state of your intellect.

I don't think any human being/artist is 100% emotionally stable, based on the human condition and our emotions that relate to it.

Am I melancholy? I certainly have moments. I like to think there's a capacity for joy as well.

People try to make a Greek tragedy of my life, and they can't do it. I'm too happy.

I would say a lot of the emotion in what I do is a sort of a thankfulness for those energies being around, because there's been points in my life when they weren't around, and it's a real sort of miserable existence.

I think if you're an unhappy person, you're always going to be an unhappy person. You're probably going to be less unhappy if your business is doing well, if I'm being honest.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair, there is no hope.

I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.

I've had a very happy life, and although I have had tragedy, I've never suffered from any darkness.

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

My mental state is perfectly fine.

Happiness is not something you achieve. It's not something you do or someplace you get to. Happiness is something you inhabit.

I do not believe in struggle. Struggle is a state of mind.

The miserable person is easily enslaved.The cheerful person,the blissful person,cannot be enslaved.

A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune.

If you think peaceful thoughts, you'll feel peaceful emotions, and that's what you'll bring to every life situation. If you're attached to being right or absolutely need something in order to be at peace or successful, you'll live a life of striving yet never arriving.

I've had happy moments in my life, but I don't think that happiness-- being happy-- is a perpetual state that anyone can be in. Life isn't that way.