This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Aristotle said that all creative people are dissatisfied because they are looking for happiness in perfection and seeking for things that do not exist. This is one of the hopes of the world. There is no progress where people are satisfied. Discontent is perhaps the most potent challenge to improvement.
Challenge | Discontent | Improvement | People | Perfection | Progress | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, also called Bernard de Bouyer
A great obstacle to happiness is to anticipate too great a happiness.
Anyone who starts out to chase happiness will find it running away from him. We get happiness by indirection.
David Gardner, fully David Pierpont Gardner
Success is getting what you want, happiness is getting what you get.
The true greatness and the true happiness of a country consist in wisdom; in that enlarged an comprehensive wisdom which includes education, knowledge, religion, virtue, freedom, with every influence which advances and every institution which supports them.
Education | Freedom | Greatness | Influence | Knowledge | Religion | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Happiness |
George Gissing, fully George Robert Gissing
I have the happiness of the passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.
Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul, and never forget to have a penny, when all thy expenses are enumerated and paid: then shalt thou reach the point of happiness and independence shall by thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy soul walk upright nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds.
James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield
It is one of the many paradoxes of psychology that the pursuit of happiness defeats its own purpose. We find happiness only when we do not directly seek it. An analogy will make this clear. In listening to music at a concert, we experience pleasurable feelings only so long as our attention is directed towards the music. But if in order to increase our happiness we give all our attention to our subjective feeling of happiness, it vanishes. Nature contrives to make it impossible for anyone to attain happiness by turning into himself.
Attention | Experience | Feelings | Listening | Music | Nature | Order | Psychology | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Happiness is the legitimate fruitage of love and service. Set happiness before you as an end, no matter in what guise of wealth, or fame, or oblivion even, and you will not attain it. But renounce it and seek the pleasure of God, and that instant is the birth of your own.
Birth | Fame | God | Love | Oblivion | Pleasure | Service | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |