“The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation”

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
Context: The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it.

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George Bernard Shaw 413
Irish playwright 1856–1950

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“Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.”

Les hommes qui se sont occupés du bonheur des peuples ont rendu leurs proches bien malheureux.
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“I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

As quoted in in Contemporary American Novelists, 1900-1920 (1922) by Carl Clinton Van Doren
Context: I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.

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