
“Sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less”
Source: Between the Lines
The quote "We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain." is famous quote by Charles Bukowski (1920–1994), American writer.
Variant: We don't even ask for happiness, just a little less pain.
Source: From a letter to William Packard from 1985 (published in Reach for the Sun - the 3rd volume of Bukowski correspondence)
Context: Sex, love, duty, God, family are not to be bargained with against happiness, and we don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.
“Sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less”
Source: Between the Lines
“You don’t know anything, but I know even less.”
“Face to Face,” p. 116
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Hopelessness”
Conference on domestic violence, http://www.maryfonden.dk/en/washington-world-conference-speech (27 February 2012)
"Kurukshetra" in Essays on the Gita (1995), p. 39
Context: Even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. Only those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more destructive it can be than the sword and the cannon; and only those who do not limit their view to the act and its immediate results, can see how tremendous are its after-effects, how much is eventually destroyed and with that much all the life that depended upon it and fed upon it. Evil cannot perish without the destruction of much that lives by the evil, and it is no less destruction even if we personally are saved the pain of a sensational act of violence.
Fond Farewell.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)