#happines

On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure. What does this contradictory pattern mean? There are several possible explanations, but one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible. ↗

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#happiness #satisfaction #work #experience

My love for you spans over the lines of my past, present, and future. You are what I love remembering, what I love experiencing, and what I love looking forward to. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#happiness #life #love #past #present

Everyone needs a certain amount of money. Beyond that, we pursue money because we know how to obtain it. We don't necessarily know how to obtain happiness. ↗

— Gregg Easterbrook

#amount #because #beyond #certain #everyone

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#caught #chase #comes #dreaming #find

Although people sometimes assume that the happy are self-absorbed and complacent, just the opposite is true. In general, happiness doesn't make people want to drink daiquiris on the beach; it makes them want to help rural villagers gain better access to clean water. ↗

— Gretchen Rubin

#happiness #experience

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy. ↗

— Heraclitus

#envy #happiness #lasts #longer #our

I’ve always wanted to put other people’s photos up around my house. My life needs some happy memories. ↗

— Bauvard

#memories #photographs #life

She bowed her head, clasping her hands tightly before her upon the arm of his chair, for her heart yearned towards him, yet could not reach him, and it made her throat ache with unhappiness to meet that look of his that rested on her face without seeing it. ↗

— Georgette Heyer

#before #bowed #chair #could #face

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. ↗

— Francis Hutcheson

#best #greatest #greatest happiness #happiness #numbers

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#element #happiness #indestructible #perfect #possibility