“A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction. He does not really seek happiness, rather he seeks for a condition which matches his personal idea regarding the nature of happiness. But happiness is not a mere idea, for one idea will always have competition from another idea. The is why the unhappy man chases for ever from one attraction to another. Happiness will come when he stops chasing, that is, when he stops thinking that an idea about happiness is the same as happiness. A man enjoying the sunshine does so without analysing it.”

— Vernon Howard

Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Vernon Howard 53

American writer 1918–1992

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“The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man's real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man's search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together….”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. XIV, ch. 12
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

“Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.”

George Orwell book Coming Up for Air

Source: Coming Up for Air, Part 3, Ch. 1

“A lot of people, they think, ‘Oh, I’m only going to be happy when I find a special person who is going to make me happy.’ No. In life, you have to be happy with yourself first, number one. When you’re happy with yourself, you have to find another person who is happy with herself so you can share your happiness.”

Fabio Lanzoni (1961) Italian model, actor and author

Fifteen hours with Fabio http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2015/12/23/fabio/?utm_term=.55d4ac289b9c (December 23, 2015)

“Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

“I refuse to accept other people's ideas of happiness for me. As if there's a "one size fits all" standard for happiness”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Source: Thank You and You're Welcome (2009), p.22

“Happiness is a new idea in Europe.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Le bonheur est une idée neuve en Europe.
Sur le mode d'exécution du décret contre les ennemis de la Révolution http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_decret_ennemis_revolution_03_03_94.htm, speech to the National Convention (March 3, 1794).

“It bewildered Ig, the idea that a person could not be interested in music. It was like not being interested in happiness.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

“There is no happiness without forgetfulness. I have never known a real man of action to be unhappy during action. How could he be? Like a child at play, he stops thinking of himself.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

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