The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.
Interpretation
Our desires, griefs, and fears often disrupt our happiness.
This quote by Samuel Johnson emphasizes that the primary obstacles to our happiness are rooted in our desires for things we do not have, the grief we experience from losses, and the fears that hold us back. By recognizing these disturbances, we can seek to overcome them and achieve a more fulfilling state of happiness.
In practice
This quote could be used in a self-help seminar to discuss the sources of unhappiness.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
The true enjoyments must be spontaneous and compulsive and look to no remoter end.
Everything exists in limited quantity - especially happiness.
The way to be happy is to make others so.
The fact that there is always a positive side to life is the one thing that gives me a lot of happiness.
Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.
Waiting to be happy limits our brain's potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward.
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