“Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.”
Jacopo Sannazaro (1458–1530) Italian writer
Tanto è miser l'uom quant' ei si riputa.
Ecloga Octava; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), "Mind".
“A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.”
15
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.
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H.L. Mencken281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
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Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
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“The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.”
Shirley MacLaine (1934) American actress
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Laurence Sterne book A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
The Passport, Versailles.
Original: (fr) Un homme qui rit, said the duke, ne sera jamais dangereux.
Source: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
“Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.”
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar
Nur wer einig ist mit der Welt kann einig seyn mit sich selbst.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 130
“Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Source: Pensées and Other Writings
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey
He told Romanian Foreign Minister Victor Antonescu on 20 March 1937 http://web.archive.org/web/20180628120602/http://www.atam.gov.tr/ataturkun-soylev-ve-demecleri/romanya-disisleri-bakani-antonescu-ile-konusma
“The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.”
Colin Wilson book The Outsider
Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 139