unbroken happiness is a bore: it should have ups and downs.

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

Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!

The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.

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. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.

Similar to the way we are led along in life by the endless pursuits of pleasures, we are led along, even saved by the endless revelation of pain. This in itself may not be a happy thought, but it is a reminder of how relative, always, are our perceptions of misery and joy.

Be happy, but never satisfied.

Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.

For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Maybe unhappiness is the continuum through which a human life moves, and joy just a series of blips, of islands in the stream.

For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, “Time to stop now!” he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner.

We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness.

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. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.

It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.

What is the happiness ? Is it really happiness ? Nothing stable, just happen, stay and decay... Everything is impermanence, dissatisfaction and nothing can ever belong to itself