This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
Men | Unhappiness |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more then they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
Paradise | People | Unhappiness | World | Happiness |
Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no: poverty and unhappiness are man's doing.
Man | Poverty | Unhappiness |
If our condition were truly happy, we should not need to divert ourselves from it. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room.
Cause | Death | Happy | Ignorance | Man | Men | Need | Order | Unhappiness | Think |
If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.
Injustice | Injustice | Unhappiness |
The universal demand for happiness and the widespread unhappiness in our society (and there are but two sides of the same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we have begun to live in a labor society which lacks enough laboring to keep it contented. For only the animal labors, and neither the craftsman nor the man of action, has ever demanded to be "happy" or thought that mortal man could be happy.
Action | Enough | Happy | Labor | Man | Mortal | Society | Thought | Unhappiness | Society | Happiness | Thought |
Nine times out of ten, optimism is a sly form of selfishness, a method of isolating oneself from the unhappiness of others.
Method | Optimism | Selfishness | Unhappiness |
Since unhappiness excites interest, many, in order to render themselves interesting, feign unhappiness.
Order | Unhappiness |
Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.
Past | Present | Sorrow | Unhappiness |
Happiness is a skill that can be learned. To acquire this skill it is necessary to master: the ability to focus on happiness-producing thoughts instead of those which cause unhappiness and the ability to evaluate events and situations as positive instead of negative, or at least lower the degree of negativity... The person with greater control over his thoughts will have greater control over his emotions.
Ability | Cause | Control | Emotions | Events | Focus | Skill | Unhappiness | Will |
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 | World |
There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation.
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.
Pain | Sense | Unhappiness | Happiness |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; you are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes, death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either.
Death | Life | Life | Nothing | Suffering | Unhappiness | Witness | Happiness |
We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.
Language | Man | Peace | Unhappiness |
As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.
Unhappiness | World |
L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard
To be happy, one only must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are. Unhappiness is only this: the inability to confront that which is.