They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
Edith WhartonRead
There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True comfort comes from accepting life as it is rather than relentlessly pursuing happiness.
In this quote, Edith Wharton suggests that the relentless pursuit of happiness can often lead to misery. Instead, she proposes that if one chooses to let go of this pursuit and accepts life as it unfolds, they can find satisfaction and contentment in the present moment. This perspective invites individuals to rethink their relationship with happiness and to recognize that joy can be found in acceptance rather than in ceaseless chasing.
Themes
HappinessComfortAcceptanceContentmentLife
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about finding inner peace.
More from Edith Wharton
All quotes →They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods
Edith WhartonRead
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
Edith WhartonRead
And I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
Edith WhartonRead
As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep
Edith WhartonRead
There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.
Edith WhartonRead
Similar quotes
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.
George EliotRead
The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
As you identify less and less with the “me”, you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don't have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last!
Anthony De MelloRead
The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.
Dalai LamaRead
Some take their gold in minted mold, and some in harps thereafter, but give me mine in bubbles fine and keep the change in laughter.
Oliver HerfordRead