Unhappiness is simply when the picture in your head doesn’t match the picture in front of you.

Unhappiness. The distinction that lies in being unhappy (as if to feel happy were a sign of shallowness, lack of ambition, ordinariness) is so great that when someone says, "But how happy you must be!" we usually protest.

Happiness is the illusion of being happy, unhappiness is the fear of being it. A little bit of fear helps you to live in the light, too much strangles you in the dark.

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.

Sooner or later in life, everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unobtainable . . . Our ever-sufficient knowledge of the future opposes it and this is called in the one instance: hope.

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.

It would seem that our intelligence is the source of our unhappiness in an almost literal way; but it would also imply that our unhappiness is the source of our strength as a species.

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.” — Don Herold

Unhappiness comes from wanting what others have. Happiness comes from wanting what you already have.

Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating the spirit of enterprise; for the result is waste of time and general stagnation.

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.

Happiness, as it’s said, is just results minus expectations.