“But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?”

— Jane Austen , book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?" by Jane Austen?

Jane Austen photo

Jane Austen 477

English novelist 1775–1817

Related quotes

“A lot of people, they think, ‘Oh, I’m only going to be happy when I find a special person who is going to make me happy.’ No. In life, you have to be happy with yourself first, number one. When you’re happy with yourself, you have to find another person who is happy with herself so you can share your happiness.”

Fabio Lanzoni (1961) Italian model, actor and author

Fifteen hours with Fabio http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2015/12/23/fabio/?utm_term=.55d4ac289b9c (December 23, 2015)

“It is beyond doubt that the happiness which love can bestow on its chosen souls is the highest that can fall to mortal's lot. But when I imagine myself in the place of the man who, after twenty happy years, now in one moment loses his all, I am moved almost to say that he is the wretchedest of mortals, and that it is better never to have known such happy days. So it is on this miserable earth: 'the purest joy finds its grave in the abyss of time.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

What are we without the hope of a better future?
As quoted in Kneller, Karl Alois, Kettle, Thomas Michael, 1911. "Christianity and the leaders of modern science; a contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century" https://archive.org/stream/christianitylead00kneluoft#page/44/mode/2up, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 44-45

“Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they would be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

“I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 3

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes (1996)

“Happiness is the feeling we experience when we are too busy to be miserable.”

Thomas Lansing Masson (1866–1934) American journalist

Tom Masson in: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. 61 (1901). p. 319.

“When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 171

“Oh Constance, we are so happy.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Related topics