Was I capable of being happy in solitude? I didn’t think so. Was I capable of being happy in general? That’s the kind of question, I think, that is best not asked.
Serotonin: A Novel by Michel Houellebecq
Category: CONTENTMENT
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He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others. At the time his words seemed to me strange, and I did not understand them; but by degrees this became a conviction with me, without thinking about it. He revealed to me a whole new world of joys in the present, without changing anything in my life, without adding anything except himself to each impression in my mind. All that had surrounded me from childhood without saying anything to me, suddenly came to life.
Family Happiness
Leo Tolstoy -
If I’m not able to enjoy the life I have today, I will not enjoy the imaginary life that I have in mind, because God has granted me the moment to enjoy what he has for me at that moment.
—Fr. Mina Dimitri -
“Poignancy, she told me, is the richest feeling humans experience, one that gives meaning to life—and it happens when you feel happy and sad at the same time. It’s the state you enter when you cry tears of joy—which tend to come during precious moments suffused with their imminent ending. When we tear up at that beloved child splashing in a rain puddle, she explains, we aren’t simply happy: “We’re also appreciating, even if it’s not explicit, that this time of life will end; that good times pass as well as bad ones; that we’re all going to die in the end. I think that being comfortable with this is adaptive. That’s emotional development.”
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
Susan Cain -
An ordinary person is concerned with his own comfort, even if it comes at the expense of others. But a person with values finds true rest when he toils for the sake of making others comfortable.
To him, the meaning of rest is providing comfort to other people, not to himself. He believes rest is that of his conscience, not of his body.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Characteristics of the Spiritual Path -
“Be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet -
Stop pleasing yourself and you will not hate your brother; stop loving yourself and you will love God.”
—St. Maximos the Confessor -
“As often as you find your way to be peaceful, without variations, be suspicious. For you are deviating from the divine ways trodden by the weary footsteps of the saints. The more you proceed on the way towards the city of the kingdom and approach its neighborhood, this will be the sign: you will meet hard temptations. And the nearer you approach, the more difficulties you will find.”
—St. Isaac of Syria
SO GOOD QUOTES 