“There is a difference in being happy and being distracted from sadness.”

— Unknown author

Last update April 19, 2022. History

Related quotes

“Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“For Freud, the pursuit of happiness is a distraction from living. It would be better to aim for something different -- a type of life in which you do not need a fantasy of satisfaction in order to find being human an interesting and worthwhile experience… Human beings are more likely to find ways of living well if they do not spend their lives aiming to be happy.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Source: The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths

“Being happy or unhappy - is that really the most important thing? Knowing the truth would be a different kind of happiness - a more satisfying kind, I think, even if it turned out to be a sad kind.”

Ira Levin book This Perfect Day

Source: This Perfect Day

“Why do people spend their time being sad when they could be happy?”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“I could see no reason for being sad. It´s just that it makes me unhappy not to feel happy.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) edited by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 829
As quoted in Traveling for Her: An Inspirational Guide (2008) by Amber Israelsen, p. 2
Variant: I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this — we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

“Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary