QUOTES ABOUT HAPPINESS

Outside the window, the weather is beyond our control. The sun will rise and set every day, sometimes there’ll be rain, and at night the moon and stars light up the sky blanketed by the darkness, and when the night gives
way to dawn, it’ll be yet another day. There’s nothing we can do to change what’s outside, but we can choose the weather in our heart. Our feelings are ours to decide, and there’s always happiness within us. The weather in our heart is ours, and ours alone.

Getting to know people is important
Caring for others feelings is a priority
Never judge a person by a few conversations
You can never really know a person
But at least you can get to know them a little better

Be Happy, Don't Tell Anyone (Sonnet)

Be happy, don't tell anyone.
Go places, don't tell anyone.
Experience life, don't tell anyone.
Pamper the inner child, don't tell anyone.

It's a sad society, the news of
your happiness stirs up only jealousy.
The more you crave to publicize your joy,
more you're stripped of your tranquility.

Your happiness doesn't need
anybody's stamp of approval.
Happiness kept private is
happiness invisible to the jungle.

What the jungle cannot see,
the jungle cannot destroy.
Be kind to all, but bare to few,
joy broadcasted is the end of joy.

Strive for a relationship where you and your partner are mutually important, but not sole sources of meaning. The strongest connections often form when two individuals, each with their own passions and purposes, choose to support and complement one another's journeys. Recognize that priorities may shift with life's seasons, and that being central to someone's life doesn't diminish their other meaningful pursuits. True partnership balances interdependence with personal growth, allowing both individuals to thrive together and independently.

The modern private enterprise system ingeniously employs the human urges of greed and envy as its motive power. . . .

Greed and envy demand continuous and limitless economic growth of a material kind, without proper regard for conservation, and this type of growth cannot possibly fit into a finite environment.

It is a great error to assume . . . that the methodology of economics is normally applied to determine whether an activity carried on by a group within society yields a profit to society as a whole. Even nationalised industries are not considered from this more comprehensive point of view. Every one of them is given a financial target—which is, in fact, an obligation—and is expected to pursue this target without regard to any damage it might be inflicting on other parts of the economy.

Gratitude lifted my baseline mood up from being constantly seared by the pain of existence to living a largely satisfying life. Joy returned for the first time in a long time. I laughed easily, enjoyed the company of friends, hated myself less.

Le Guin has a point. Obviously, we have no idea how relatively happy the inhabitants of Ukrainian mega-sites like Maidenetske or Nebelivka were, compared to the lords who constructed kurgan burials, or even the retainers ritually sacrificed at their funerals; or the bonded labourers who provided wheat and barley to the inhabitants of later Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast (though we can guess), and as anyone who has read the story knows, Omelas had some problems too. But the point remains: why do we assume that people who have figured out a way for a large population to govern and support itself without temples, palaces and military fortifications – that is, without overt displays of arrogance, self-abasement and cruelty – are somehow less complex than those who have not?

Cultivating deep-seated joy to carry us through the painful times of life is absolutely a praiseworthy pursuit, but in no way does it mean that God is uninterested in our day-to-day happiness. When we measure our spiritual success in terms of how much we have suffered for the sake of the gospel, how unpleasant our daily battle against sin is, or how exhaustive our devotion, we are stripping ourselves of the sacred gift of delight.