“Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable.”

“The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.”

“There are only two categories of happy people in the material world: fools and transcendentalists. Fools are so oblivious that they manage to convince themselves they are happy in this material prison. Transcendentalists are happy because they can see above the material dualities, and know that their parole is at hand. Everyone else is essentially miserable. This is because calamity in the material world cannot be avoided, just as water cannot be avoided in the ocean.”

“If Germans are happy it means everyone else is miserable.”

“Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes thought of as primitive, dull and dimwitted. In fact, of course, they can be lethally fast, spectacularly beautiful, surprisingly affectionate and very sophisticated.”

“It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.”

“I consider a good reputation is a great part of the human happiness. Some people, if they are very, very rich can permit themselves certain negligence to their reputations.”

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”

“Because I was more often happy for other people, I got to spend more time being happy. And as I saw more light in everybody else, I seemed to have more myself. (250)”

“It’s not that I’m so exciting, it’s just that everyone else is so dull.”