“Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?”
Source: A Room with a View
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E.M. Forster 200
English novelist 1879–1970Related quotes

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
Source: The Social Contract and Discourses

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), V. On Conversation

“I do not think that we have a “right” to happiness. If happiness happens, say thanks.”

Seminar at LeSEA Broadcasting Studios in South Bend, Indiana http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/interviews/2003/richmullins-hiatranscript1.html (February 1993)

“Why do we worship such a god when whim decides him so often?”
Book 1, Chapter 4 “Of Living Swords and Dead Gods” (p. 463)
The Elric Cycle, Stormbringer (1965)

Maxim 19 (p. 12)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
Context: Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people's expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would. This rule does not hold true for bad things: when an evil has been exaggerated, its reality makes people applaud. What was feared as ruinous comes to seem tolerable.