Smart people often talk trash about happiness and worse than trash about books on happiness, and they have been doing so for centuries - just as long as other people have been pursuing happiness and writing books about it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you look at the books about well-being, you see one word - it's happiness. People do not distinguish.
The real problem with happiness is neither its pursuers nor their books; it's happiness itself. Happiness is like beauty: part of its glory lies in its transience.
People don't understand what happiness is, so they have an idea of what will make them happy, but it never does.
It's obvious, but perhaps worth saying, that happiness has virtually nothing to do with the state of your intellect.
Happiness is just a positive perception from our brain. Some days, you will be unhappy. Our brain is a tool we use. It's not who we are.
I don't know that happy people are interesting to write about - or to read about.
One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.
Actual happiness is sometimes confused with the pursuit of it; and the most mindless and crass how-tos can get jumbled in with the modestly useful, the appealingly personal, and the genuinely interesting.
No opposing quotes found.