Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.

Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.

Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

The greatest deception, and the deepest source of unhappiness, is the illusion of finding life by excluding God, of finding freedom by excluding moral truths and personal responsibility.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

The pleasure of despair. But then, it is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation...
...everything is a mess in which it is impossible to tell what's what, but that despite this impossibility and deception it still hurts you, and the less you can understand, the more it hurts.

People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.

It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness people cherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring of their life. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in the pride of power, and others in the achievements of art and literature; a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in search for knowledge.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery

What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again.

Just as the bird leaves no trace, no record of its flight upon the void, so human desire can gain nothing out of life. But to realize this is at once to become the sage, since the greatest wisdom lies on the other side, immediately on the other side, of the greatest despair. It is, of course, something more than despair — a joy, a sense of creative life and power, I might even say a security and certainty, beyond any imagining. But this is a way of feeling which the will and the imagination are as unable to bring about as to make one’s bones grow or decrease the speed of the pulse. They must happen by themselves.

Hope is nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.