“One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness — simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience.”
On est heureux par soi-même quand on sait s'y prendre, avoir des goûts simples, un certain courage, une certaine abnégation, l'amour du travail et avant tout une bonne conscience.
Letter to Charles Poney, (16 November 1866), published in Georges Lubin (ed.) Correspondance (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1964-95) vol. 20, p. 188; André Maurois (trans. Gerard Hopkins) Lélia: The Life of George Sand (New York: Harper, 1954) p. 418
Variant: One is happy once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.
Source: Correspondance, 1812-1876, Volume 5
Original
On est heureux par soi-même quand on sait s'y prendre, avoir des goûts simples, un certain courage, une certaine abnégation, l'amour du travail et avant tout une bonne conscience.
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George Sand 38
French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore D… 1804–1876Related quotes
“Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and difficult as that.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
Source: The Museum of Innocence
“In order to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy.”
Compassion and the Individual https://www.dalailama.com/messages/compassion-and-human-values/compassion
Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 5, Reason And Genes, p. 145
Force of Circumstances Vol. III (1963) as translated by Richard Howard (1968)
General sources
Context: Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it. Psychiatrists have told me that they give The Second Sex to their women patients to read, and not merely to intellectual women but to lower-middle-class women, to office workers and women working in factories. 'Your book was a great help to me. Your book saved me,' are the words I have read in letters from women of all ages and all walks of life.
If my book has helped women, it is because it expressed them, and they in their turn gave it its truth. Thanks to them, it is no longer a matter for scandal and concern. During these last ten years the myths that men created have crumbled, and many women writers have gone beyond me and have been far more daring than I. Too many of them for my taste take sexuality as their only theme; but at least when they write about it they now present themselves as the eye-that-looks, as subject, consciousness, freedom.
“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”