“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.”
Variant: People see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it’ll be.
Original
La raison pour laquelle tant de gens trouvent qu'il est si difficile d'être heureux c'est qu'ils imaginent toujours le passé meilleur qu'il ne l'était, le présent pire qu'il n'est vraiment et le futur plus compliqué qu'il ne le sera.
Last update Oct. 3, 2022.
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Marcel Pagnol 9
novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France 1895–1974Related quotes
Anton Chekhov
(1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician
Alternate translation: We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.
Мы хлопочем, чтобы изменить жизнь, чтобы потомки были счастливы, а потомки скажут по обыкновению: прежде лучше было, теперешняя жизнь хуже прежней.
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)
Prevale
(1983) Italian DJ and producer
Original: (it) Fa che ogni tuo istante sia sempre migliore di quello passato, si vive di presente per il futuro, si vive d'amore, musica, felicità e soprattutto coraggio nei momenti difficili.
Source: prevale.net
Variants: One of the schools in Tlön has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the present is undefined, that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that past is no more than present memory . . . Another maintains that the universe is comparable to those code systems in which not all the symbols have meaning, and in which only that which happens every three hundredth night is true...
The history of the universe... is the handwriting produced by a minor god in order to communicate with a demon.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Context: One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified an mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. Another, that the history of the universe — and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives — is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon. Another, that the universe is comparable to those cryptographs in which not all the symbols are valid and that only what happens every three hundred nights is true. Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.
“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!”
Thomas Jefferson
(1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to John Adams (1 August 1816)
1810s
“There is no greater grief than to find no happiness, but happiness in what is past.”
Jeanette Winterson
(1959) English writer
Source: The Powerbook
Richard Rohr
(1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest
Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life