Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

Happiness does not come automatically. It is not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortune takes back. It depends on us alone. One does not become happy overnight, but with patient labor, day after day. Happiness is constructed, and that requires effort and time. In order to become happy, we have to learn how to change ourselves.

Every man wants to be happy, but in order to be so he needs first to understand what happiness is.

Sociologists define happiness as “the degree to which a person evaluates the overall quality of his present life-as-a-whole positively. In other words, how much the person likes the life he or she leads.”

Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

happiness is above all a love of life.

The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world. Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs; it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind.

The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world. Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs; it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality.

we so often confuse genuine happiness with merely seeking enjoyable emotions.

lasting happiness is boring because it is always the same, while suffering is more exciting because it is always different.

“the desire for happiness is essential to man. It is the motivator of all our acts.

Even if, ideally, the satisfaction of all our desires were achievable, it would lead not to happiness but to the creation of new desires or, just as likely, to indifference, disgust, or even depression.

I have more than I could possibly need and I am still not happy, happiness must be impossible.

The fact is that without inner peace and wisdom, we have nothing we need to be happy.

Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.

“When selfish happiness is the only goal in life, life soon becomes goalless,”

It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.

Seeking happiness outside ourselves is like waiting for sunshine in a cave facing north.

We forge bonds of friendship, start families, live in society, work to improve the material conditions of our existence — is that enough to define happiness? No. We can have “everything we need” to be happy and yet be most unhappy;

we work out at the gym to stay healthy; we spend a lot of time enhancing our comfort, our wealth, and our social status. We put a great deal into all this, and yet we do so little to improve the inner condition that determines the very quality of our lives.

and death can occur at any moment. We willingly spend a dozen years in school, then go on to college or professional training for several more; we work out at the gym to stay healthy; we spend a lot of time enhancing our comfort, our wealth, and our social status. We put a great deal into all this, and yet we do so little to improve the inner condition that determines the very quality of our lives.