When I look at what the world does and where people nowadays believe they can find happiness, I am not sure that that is true happiness. The happiness of these ordinary people seems to consist in slavishly imitating the majority, as if this were their only choice. And yet they all believe they are happy. I cannot decide whether that is happiness or not. Is there such a thing as happiness?

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.

When [man] is happy he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn't analyze it, just as if happiness were his right.

Man's real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

The happiest is he who suffers the least pain; the most miserable, he who enjoys the least pleasure.

How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!

Give me a bed and a book and I am happy.