This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
The greatest unhappiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
Character | Unhappiness |
What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.
Character | Impatience | Men | People | Time | Unhappiness |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.
Character | Esteem | Evil | Malice | Pity | Stupidity | Unhappiness | Think |
It is no happiness to live long, nor unhappiness to die soon; happy is he that hath lived long enough to die well.
Character | Enough | Happy | Unhappiness | Happiness |
Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar
All weaknesses are just fabrications of mind. If I am not happy with myself, how can you make me happy? It takes time to see that my unhappiness stems from myself and not from you. We love to blame others as the source of our unhappiness because that is how we feel good about ourselves. But when we go deeper, we realize that no one in the whole world can make us happy or unhappy. It depends on our own integrity.
Blame | Character | Good | Happy | Integrity | Love | Mind | Time | Unhappiness | World |
What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.
Character | Pleasure | Unhappiness |
One of the prime causes of unhappiness in the world is approval-seeking.
Character | Unhappiness | World |
We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.
Cause | Distrust | Faith | Life | Life | Self | Strength | Unhappiness | Wisdom |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
Unhappiness | Wisdom | World |
True happiness is exotic; its birthplace is in heaven; unhappiness is of native growth.
Growth | Heaven | Unhappiness | Wisdom | Happiness |
Horace Fletcher, nicknamed "The Great Masticator"
The underlying cause of all weakness and unhappiness is man has always been, and still is, weak habit-of-thought.
Cause | Habit | Man | Thought | Unhappiness | Weakness | Wisdom |
D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
The more we search for an alibi, the more we discover that unhappiness on earth is man-made.
Earth | Man | Search | Unhappiness | Wisdom |
Reuel Howe, fully Reuel Lanphier Howe
Much marriage difficulty and unhappiness are due to the failure of the partners to accept the fact of their finiteness and its meaning. Instead, they hold themselves up to ideals of performance possible only to God.
Difficulty | Failure | God | Ideals | Marriage | Meaning | Unhappiness | Failure |
I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.
Life | Life | People | Unhappiness | Afraid |